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WASHINGTON, OUR EXAMPLE. 



THE FATHER OF A MTION 



WILL 



RESTORE IT TO RE^CE 



BY MRS. L. C. SEARLE. 



"Providence ap])r)int*'rl "\Vn«hiria-ton ("liildlo?? Ilial Amciica iniirht 
call him father." 

UfON War. — " My first wish is to see this plague of mankind ban- 
ished from the earth, and the sons and daughters of this world employed 
in more pleasing and innocent amusements, than in preparing instru- 
ments, and exercising thorn for the destruction of mankind." — George 
Washington. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

JAMES CHALLEN k SON, 

18G5. 



WASHINaiON, OUR EXAMPLE. 



THE FATHER OF A lATION 



WILL 



HESTORE IT TO JPE^OE 



BY MRS. L. C. SEARLE. 




'Providence appointed Washington childless that America might 
call him father." • 

Upon "War. — " My first wish is to see this plague of mankind ban- 
ished from the earth, and the sons and daughters of this world employed 
in more pleasing and innocent amusements, than in preparing instru- 
ments, and exercising them for the destruction of mankind." — George 
Washington. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

JAMES CHALLEN & SON, 

1865. 



£>4/ 
.S45 



" Has the Birthday of Washington any lesson to us ? The nation of 
which he was the leader, in its struggle for birth and place among the 
nations of the earth, has been for three years carrying on a struggle for 
existence, compared with which the toils and pains of that early conflict 
are not to be named. Have we lost in the heat of the conflict any thing 
of the veneration with which we think of the hero whose birth we cele- 
brate to-day ? Are we losing sight of things which he held dear, and 
setting at naught the principles for which his days of toil and nights of 
anxiety were spent ? There are those among us who claim that we are, 
and say that the dominant party has no desire to keep Washington before 
the country as a father, a teacher, or an example." — N. Y. Times, 
Feb. 22d, 1864. 

"As the Copperheads profess to hold the memory of Washington in 
tjie highest respect, and to regard him as a model patriot and an im- 
maculate statesman, we hope to be pardoned for suggesting to them tJiat 
a slight study of the life and character of their idol might add biographi- 
cal accuracy to their lucubrations. Washington was human, and had 
his share of human infirmities. We claim Washington as an abolitionist. 
The Virginia slaveholders were nearer the infancy of the republic than 
we are. They knew what doctrine of human equality the Revolution 
was intended to vindicate and establish ; they felt as we can never feel 
the pressure of strictly logical conclusions." — N. Y. Tribune, Feb. 
4J2d, 1864. 

"When God resolved to set his people free from Egyptian bondage, 
he raised up able and mighty men to efi'ect his glorious purposes. There 
is a striking resemblance between the history of the Israelites and that 
of the American colonies. Like Moses, Washington led his countrymen 
through the dreary wilderness of the Revolution, and planted them on 
the promised land of freedom. Like Moses, he placed his trust in the 
(iod of Hosts, and relied upon his special aid and direction under all 
circumstances." — Mrs. Willard. 



Peovidence appointed "Washington childless that a 
Nation might call him Father." 



When Washington drew his sword in defence of 
America against the tyranny of George the Third and 
the British ParUament, white men of all nations were 
welcomed to the standard unfurled for liberty and inde- 
pendence. France sent her Marquis de Lafayette, Prus- 
sia her Baron Steuben, Poland her noble Kosciusko, who, 
with many more of their own countrymen, as well as those 
of other nations, crossed the ocean and offered their ser- 
vices to the warrior, fighting for the freedom of his 
country. The Americans hailed these friends of liberty 
from foreign lands with gratitude and joy, and numbers 
were appointed to positions of honor and trust. 

But already in America, dwelling close at hand in 
every colony, was a race of men, numbered by hundreds 
of thousands, who received no greeting of welcome into 
the army, but were positively forbidden to enhst under 
the banner of the " Father of his Country." In his 
"Orderly Book," bearing the date of 1775, there still 
stands recorded this prohibition: "No negroes, or boys 
unable to bear arms, or old men, are to be enlisted." 
The black race from Africa, wliich had been forced 
among our ancestors by the English government while 
engaged in the African Slave Trade, was not only thus 
excluded by Washington, the Commander-in-Chief, 
from a place by the side of the white race, as soldiers 
in his army, but by the laws of the American people ; 



"WASHINGTON SOLICITED NO BLACK MEN 



and in two instances only was there any deviation from 
this established order during eight long years of war 
with their powerful and haughty foe. 

In June, 1775, General Washington was sent to the 
relief of Massachusetts, the harbor of Boston having 
been blockaded by a British fleet, and in December fol- 
lowing he wrote to Congress as follows: "It has been 
represented to me that the free negroes, who have served 
in the army at Cambridge, are very much dissatisfied at 
being discarded. As it is to be apprehended that they 
may seek employ in the ministerial army, I have pre- 
sumed to depart from the resolution respecting them, 
and have given license for their being enlisted. If this 
is disapproved of by Congress, I will put a stop to it." 
Mr. Sparks, the publisher of the writings of Washing- 
ton, explains the above letter as follows : " At a meeting 
of the general officers previously to the arrival of the 
Committee from Congress in camp, it was unanimously 
resolved that it was not expedient to enlist slaves into 
the new army, and by a large majority, negroes of every 
description were excluded from enlistment. When the 
subject was referred to the Committee in conference, 
this decision was confirmed. In regard to free negroes, 
however, the resolve was not adhered to, and probably 
for the reason here mentioned by Wasliington." 

Bancroft throws additional light on the subject. He 
says: 

" In October, 1775, the conference in the camp of the 
army at Boston, with Lynch, Harrison and Franklin, 
thought it proper to exclude negroes from the new en- 
listment, but Washington, at the crisis of his distress, 
finding that those who had entered the army at the 
beginning were very much dissatisfied at being dis- 



TO FIGHT HIS BATTLES. 



carded, took the responsibility of reversing this decision 
and referred the subject to Congress. That body ap- 
pointed Wythe, Wilson and Samuel Adams, to delib- 
erate on the question. On the report of this able 
Committee, Congress voted that the free negroes who 
had served faithfully in the army, at Cambridge, might 
be enlisted therein, but no others." 

Here are the facts of history, that in " his crisis of 
distress" only did Washington receive black men into 
his army, that the general officers resolved by a large 
majority that negroes of every description should be 
excluded, and that Congress, composed of the ablest 
statesmen in America, passed a law that no negroes 
should be received into the army as soldiers except 
those who had served faithfully at Cambridge. Yet it 
is now boldly asserted that "Washington did not hesi- 
tate to solicit the military services of negroes — that our 
fathers did not hesitate to put arms into the hands of 
the black race — that General I^afayette was not ashamed 
to fight beside a black soldier, and that this war will 
never end until the American people accept the negro 
race as their equals and their brothers." 

The history of the campaign before Boston is a his- 
tory of successive exertions to surmount almost insu- 
perable obstacles, by one who was solicitous in the 
extreme to perform some great and useful achievement; 
and he writes, "To be restrained in every military oper- 
ation for want of means to carry it on is not very pleasing, 
especially as the means used to conceal my weakness 
from the enemy conceals it also from our friends and 
adds to their wonder." 

The other instance mentioned in the history of the 
war of the Revolution of the acceptance of black men 



THE PATRIOT FATHERS 



into the army, was as follows. Mr. Sparks says : " In 
raising recruits, the plan recommended by Congress was 
that each State should be divided into districts, and a 
person be appointed to raise recruits in each, the whole to 
be under the direction of the State authorities. General 
Varnum suggested that a battalion of negroes might be 
raised in Rhode Island. The idea was communicated 
to Governor Cooke, who laid the subject before the 
Assembly. He reported the following result to Wash- 
ington: 'Liberty is given to every effective slave to 
enter into the service during the war, and upon his 
passing muster he is absolutely made free, and entitled 
to all the wages, bounties and encouragements given by 
Congress to any soldier enlisting into the service. The 
masters are allowed at the rate of one hundred and 
twenty pounds for the most valuable slave, and in pro- 
portion for those of less value. The number of slaves 
in the State is not great, but it is generally thought that 
three hundred and upwards will be enlisted.' The 
report of the Assembly gives also the reasons for con- 
senting to the enlistment of negroes. It says: 'The 
enemy with a great force have taken possession of 
the capital and a great part of this State, and this 
State is obliged to raise a very considerable number of 
troops for its own immediate defence, whereby it is, in a 
manner, rendered impossible to furnish recruits without 
adopting this measure.' " 

These incidents all go to prove that under the most 
pressing circumstances only did our revolutionary fa- 
thers accept the military services of the negroes, who 
were held as property by the northern as well as 
southern colonies at the time of the Revolution, and 



RECOGNISED NO NEGRO EQUALITY. 



were valued at as high a sum in Rhode Island as in the 
slave States generally since that day. 

Another " crisis of distress" occurred during the war, 
in which it was proposed to arm the slaves. Marshall, 
in his Life of Washington, says : 

" General Greene was informed that large reinforce- 
ments were expected by the British Army at Charleston, 
South Carolina, which excited great alarm, as the time 
of service of many of his troops was about expiring. 
He therefore recommended to the Governor of that 
State, that his army should be recruited from the slaves. 
The Governor laid the matter before the Legislature, 
which was soon afterward convened, but the measure 
was not adopted. 

" But in the revolutionary army, however, there were 
many slaves attending on the officers, because slavery 
at that time existed in all the colonies, and there are 
numerous instances on record of heroic deeds performed 
by individual slaves, suddenly and on their own respon- 
sibility." 

It is thus clearly established that our ancestors, the 
Patriot Fathers of the present generation in America, 
had no companionship or affiliation with the negro, and 
never adopted him into their society ; that the Puritan 
Fathers of New England recognized no equality or 
brotlierhood between themselves and the black race, 
other than is now recognized by the people who still 
hold them in servitude ; that Massachusetts as well as 
South Carolina refused to arm her slaves to fight an 
enemy at her own door, and that the whole American 
people chose to fight their battles for independence 
without the aid of the African race. 

Their independence achieved, they constructed the 



10 THE GOVERNMENT FORMED 



best government ever devised by man — a government 
declared to be ordained and approved of God ; and this 
great system was planned and devised without the aid 
of either the African or the Indian race. No negro or 
Indian ever sat in the councils of the nation, with the 
Fathers of the American Republic, and no counsel or 
advice was ever asked or received of a single member 
of either tribe. The nation was founded and builded 
up, without including within its structure either of these 
races of men, except in the representation of slaves. It 
has been said that God sifted the nations of the old 
world, to get the precious seed to sow a nation in the 
new world ! But God selected that precious seed from 
the Caucasian race alone. The government established, 
the negro and Indian were alike excluded from all par- 
ticipation in the administration thereof AVhite men 
alone were to be its officers, and white men alone the 
soldiers that were to compose its future armies, the laws 
expressly confining the militia of the nation to white 
men. Wendell Phillips said in 1862: " What cripples 
General McClellan to-day is, that his fathers in 1789 
bound one of his hands, and left him only one to fight 
with." When Washington fought for liberty, one-third 
of the American people loved the Government of Great 
Britain better than that founded by our fathers. That 
portion of the people hold the reins of government to- 
day. They have wickedly broken the bonds with which 
our fathers bound them, and have reinstated the king 
upon the throne from which Washington was eight long 
years in displacing him. They have re-asserted the 
divine right of kings to rule, and have re-established a 
regal authority over the people of iVmerica. Washington 
broke the yoke of George the Third from off the necks 



BY WHITE 3IEX ALONE. XX. 



of the people. It is now replaced by a heavier one 
called military despotism, and a military despot sits to- 
day virtually crowned and enthroned in the chair of 
State, where, for eight happy years to America, sat the 
Father of his Country. 

AYashington addressed his soldiers soon after the 
arrival of General Howe, the British officer, in the 
following language: 

"The time is now near at hand which must determine 
whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves ; whether 
they arc to have any property they can call their own ; 
whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and 
destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretch- 
edness, from which no human efforts will deliver them. 
Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the 
choice of a brave resistance or the most abject submis- 
sion. We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die. 
Let us then rely upon the goodness of our cause and 
the aid of the Supreme Being, in whose hands victory 
is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble ac- 
tions. The eyes of all our countrymen are upon us, 
and we shall have their blessings and their praises, if 
happily we are the instruments of saving them from 
the tyranny meditated against them. Let us therefore 
animate and encourage each other, and show the whole 
world that a freeman contending for liberty on his own 
ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth. 
Eemember that liberty, property, Hfe and honor are all 
at stake." 

WASHINGTON PRATING FOR HIS COUNTRY. 

" A man related to me the following incident : When 
the British troops held possession of New York and the 



12 THE NEGRO DEPRIYED OF NO RIGHTS 



American army lay near West Point, one morning at 
sunrise I went forth to bring home my cows. On pass- 
ing a ckimp of trees I heard a moaning sound, like a 
person in distress. On nearing the spot I heard the 
words of a man at prayer. I Hstened behind a tree. 
The man came forth : it was George Washington, the 
Captain of the Lord's hosts in North America. This 
man was a member of the Society of Friends, who, 
being opposed to war on any pretext, were lukewarm, 
and in some instances opposed to the cause of the coun- 
try. He was a tory however. Having seen the General 
enter the camp he went to his house. ' Martha,' said 
he to his wife, ' we must not oppose this war any longer. 
This morning I heard the man, George Washington, 
send up a prayer to Heaven for his country, and I know 
it will be heard.' We may thus infer that Washington 
rose with the sun to pray for his country; he fought for 
her at meridian, and watched for her in the silent hours 
of night. This incident should be published on every 
22d of February, Washington's birth-day, while wood 
grows and water runs."- — Grant Thornhurn. 

The government, called the United States, is declared 
to be the best that was ever estabhshed on earth — one 
which was blest of God above all other nations that had 
an existence before it ; and this government was one in 
which the African race had no more share than if they 
had never had existence upon our globe. It is there- 
fore a m.anifest truth, that if God was with Washington 
and our fathers through the Revolution, and imparted 
unto them wisdom and foresight in the construction of 
the American Union, it was his will and pleasure that 
the negro was thus omitted from a place among the 
white people of the nation, and retained in the sphere 



BY OUR FATHERS. 13 



which had been assigned him, by the English govern- 
ment more than a hundred years before the United 
States came into existence. Washington achieved the 
liberties of the white people and was called the " Father 
of his Country." As Abraham was the father of the 
Jewish nation, and not of the Canaanites or the Amele- 
kites, so Washington was the father of the European 
race in America, and not of the African or the Indian. 
But God is the father of all the races of men, and when 
our fathers, who were the descendants of Japheth, founded 
a government in the Xew World, God enlarged Japheth, 
and Canaan remained his servant. " A servant shall he 
be to his brethren." A brother truly but a servant also. 
It is declared by some that our fathers deprived the 
negroes of their natural rights. But our fathers were 
under the government of England until they established 
their independence, and England conferred no rights 
upon the negroes but the rights of the slave. Our 
fathers took away no rights from them when they 
founded a government of their own. They were slaves 
under the English laws before our patriot fathers were 
born, and their condition remained unchanged under the 
government of the United States. They were slaves 
in Africa before America was discovered by the Euro- 
pean race, and would have remained in a worse state of 
bondage had they never been brought to our shores. 
Neither were the fathers of this Repubhc responsible 
for negro slavery after their government was founded. 
Bancroft says: "The system of slavery was fastened 
upon the rising institutions of America, not by consent 
of the corporation, nor the desires of the colonists, but 
was riveted by the policy of England without regard to 
the wishes of the people." And this institution was 



4^ ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S APOLOGY 



fastened by the strong hand of destiny, or of Provi- 
dence, and Abraham Lincoln acknowledged in Septem- 
ber, 1860, that very truth. He says: "When Southern 
people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin 
of slavery than we are I acknowledge the fact. When 
it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very 
difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can 
understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not 
blame them for not doing what I should not know how 
to do myself If all earthly power were given me I 
should not know what to do as to the existing institu- 
tion." If, then, so good and wise and great a statesman 
as the people beheve Mr. Lincoln to be, would not know 
what to do with the institution of slavery, surely the 
people of the South are not to be blamed for not being 
wiser than he. He says again: "When our govern- 
ment was established we had the institution of slavery 
among us. We were in a certain sense compelled to 
tolerate it. It was a sort of necessity. We had gone 
through our struggle and secured our own independence. 
The framers of the Constitution found the institution 
among their other institutions at the time. They found 
that by an effort to eradicate it they might lose much 
of what they had already gained. They were obhged 
to bow to the necessity ; and I say that we must not 
interfere with the institution of slavery in the States 
where it exists, because the Constitution forbids it. 
Let me say I have no prejudice against the Southern 
people. They are just what we would be in their situa- 
tion. If slavery did not exist among them, they would 
not introduce it. If it did now exist among us, we 
should not instantly give it up. We know that some 
Southern men do free their slaves, while some Northern 



FOR THE AMERICAN SLAVEHOLDER. 15 



ones so South and become most cruel slave-masters. I 
will say here that 1 have no purpose, directly or indirectly, 
to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States 
where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do 
so, and I have no inclination to do so. I will say that I 
have no purpose to introduce political and social equality 
between the white and the black races, that I am not, 
and never have been in favor of making voters or jurors 
of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to 
intermarry with white people, and I will say in addition 
to this, that there is a physical difference between the 
white and black races, which will, I beUeve, forever for- 
bid the two races living together on terms of social and 
political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so 
live, while they do remain together, there must be the 
position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any 
other man, am in favor of having the superior position 
assigned to the white race." 

Abbott, in his history of Alfred the Great, says : 
" Physiologists consider that there are five great races 
of men, whose characteristics, mental as well as bodily, 
are distinctly, strongly, and permanently marked ; and 
though education and outward influence may modify 
them, they cannot essentially change them. Compare, 
for example, the Indian and the African races. How 
entirely diverse from each other they are, not only in 
form, color, and other physical marks, but in all the ten- 
dencies and characteristics of the soul. The difference 
is still greater between these and the Caucasian race. 
This race may be properly called the European race. 
That there have been some noble specimens of humanity 
among the African race, none can deny ; but that there 
is a fixed and constitutional difference between them and 



16 THE NEGRO A SLAVE IN AFRICA. 



the Caucasian race is evident from the fact, that for two 
thousand years each has held its own continent undis- 
turbed in a great degree by the rest of mankind ; and 
while, during all this time, no nation of the African race 
has risen, so far as is known, above the lowest stage of 
civilization, there have been more than fifty entirely 
distinct and independent civilizations originated and fully 
developed in the other. For three thousand years the 
Caucasian race have continued in all circumstances, 
and every variety of situation, to exhibit the same traits 
and the same indomitable power. No calamities, how- 
ever great, no desolation, no night of darkness, however 
gloomy, have been able to keep them long in a state of 
barbarism. As Egyptians, they built the pyramids ; as 
Phoenicians, they constructed ships and perfected navi- 
gation ; as Greeks, they modelled architecture, cut sculp- 
tures in marble, wrote poems and history ; as Romans, 
they commanded a perfect military organization over fifty 
nations, and a hundred millions of people." " These are 
the descendants of Japheth." 

In 1830, Gerrit Smith says: "Look at Africa! 
What contribution has she brought for the last thousand 
years to the arts or the sciences 1 Has a single valuable 
book been printed during that long period in Africa"? 
Her moral and intellectual state is more cheerless than 
her deserts — her mind is a total waste, presenting a 
desolation without one redeeming feature. Her bar- 
barism has rendered her soil almost as useless as if the 
ocean had been permitted to roll over it." 

On February 22d, 1862, the Chaplain of Congress, 
Rev. Mr. Stockton, off'ered up the following prayer in 
the capitol of our nation : 

"Oh Lord, blessed be thy name for the supreme 



WASHINGTON A SLAVEHOLDER. 17 



foresight which gave Moses to Israel and Washington to 
America. Blessed be thy name for the birth, life, 
character, accomplishments, and achievements of the 
model man, and patriot soldier, and magistrate, whom 
we this day remember, not only as first in war, first in 
peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, but 
also as first in the veneration and admiration of mankind. 
Blessed be thy name that Washington was a man of 
prayer, that he called upon thee, that he trusted in 
Christ, and that in accepting oifice, filUng office, re- 
signing office, he called on thee, commending himself 
to thy favor and beseeching thy blessing." 

And this Moses of America, this model man, this 
man of prayer, this Christian, who trusted in Christ, 
who commended himself to the favor of God, was a 
slaveholder, and an owner of slaves. Bancroft says: 
"Abraham, the founder of the Jewish nation, was a 
slaveholder, and a purchaser of slaves. Every patriarch 
was lord of his own household." So the patriarchs of 
America were slaveholders as well as the " Father of his 
Country." Washington Irving, in his life of the illus- 
trious founder of the nation, describes the households of 
the patriarchs as follows: 

"A large Virginia estate was a little empire. The 
mansion house was the seat of government, and in this 
mansion the planter reigned supreme. He had his 
legions of negroes for domestic service, and hosts of 
others for the culture of the land. They had a kind of 
hamlet apart, with little gardens, and poultry yards, well 
stocked. Among the slaves were artificers of all kinds, 
tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, smiths, wheelwrights, etc., 
80 that a plantation produced every thing within itself, 
for ordinary use : as to articles of fashion and elegance, 
2 



"18 HIS TREATMENT OF SLAVES. 



luxuries, and expensive clothing, they were imported 
from London, for the planters on the rivers, especially 
on the Potomac, carried on an immediate trade with 
England." 

Howard Malcolm, in his Bible Dictionary, says : " The 
Hebrews had several kinds of servants, viz. : the slaves 
for life, and Hebrew or bond servants, who could only 
at the first be bound for six years. Slavery was common 
before the flood, and some of the patriarchs, as Job and 
Abraham, appear to have owned thousands, though they 
seem to have been treated with great tenderness, and 
often to have had wages and high character." 

And history testifies to the kindness with which 
Washington, Jefferson, and the other patriarchs of our 
country treated their slaves ; and Washington, though 
not a father, was a kind master to his African servants. 

Irving says : " Washington treated his negroes with 
kindness, attended to their comforts, was particularly 
careful of them in sickness, but never tolerated idleness, 
and exacted a faithful performance of all their allotted 
tasks. He provided in his will for the freedom of his 
•slaves upon the death of his wife." 

Achille Murat, in his Sketch of the United States, re- 
lates the following incident : " The writer of this article 
was once rambling over the estate of Mount Vernon, in 
Virginia, formerly the property of General Washington, 
and having lost his way, entered into conversation witli 
an old negress, who had formerly been a slave on the 
estate, but had been free six years. She concluded the 
conversation by wishing that she were a slave still, for 
in that state she had nothing to think of, whereas, 
being free, she could hardly make a living.'" 



LANGUAGE IN REGARD TO THEM. 19 



In 1793, Washington wrote to Arthur Young, as 
follows: 

" Sir — All my landed property east of the Appalachian 
mountains is under rent, except the estate called Mount 
Vernon. This hitherto I have kept in my own hands, 
but from my advanced time of life, from a wish to live 
from care during the remainder of it, I have thought of 
letting this estate also, reserving the Mansion House 
Farm for my own residence, occupation and amusement 
in agriculture. There are four farms, besides that of the 
Mansion House. These four farms contain three 
thousand two hundred and sixty acres of cultivated land. 
On Union form there is a brick house, and a new house 
is now building ; convenient thereto is sufficient accom- 
modation for fifty odd negroes, old and young, but these 
buildings might not be thought good enough for the 
workmen of your country. Hague farm has covering 
for forty odd negroes, Muddy Hole farm has covering for 
thirty negroes, lliver farm, the largest of the four, has 
sufficient covering for fifty or sixty negroes. 

" George Washington." 

While Washington was fighting for his country his 

plantation was left to the ravages of the enemy. In 

1781, he wrote to Lund Washington, at Mount Vernon, 

as follows : 

"New Windsor, 30th April, 1781. 

" Dear Lund — I am very sorry for your loss. I am 
a little sorry for my own, but that which gives me most 
concern is, that you should go on board the enemy's 
vessels, and furnish them with refreshments. It would 
have been a less painful circumstance to me, to have 
heard, that in consequence of your non-compliance with 
their request they had burnt my house, and laid my 



20 LETTER TO LUND WASHINGTON. 



plantation in ruins. I am persuaded you acted from 
your best judgment, and believe that your desire to 
preserve my property, and rescue the buildings from im- 
pending danger of conflagration, was your governing 
motive, but to go on board their vessels, carry them re- 
freshments, and request a fevor by asking a surrender 
of my negroes, was exceedingly ill-judged. I have no 
doubt of the enemy's intention to prosecute the plun- 
dering plan they have begun, and unless a stop can be 
put to it, by the arrival of superior force, I have as little 
doubt of its ending in a loss of all my negroes, and in 
the destruction of my houses, but I am prepared for the 
event, under the prospect of which, if you could deposit 
in a place of safety the most valuable articles, it might 
be consistent with policy and prudence," It was 
the strong desire of. the people of Virginia, that Wash- 
ington should take command of the army in that State. 
Writing upon the subject, he said: " Nobody, I am per- 
suaded, can doubt my inclination to be immediately 
employed in the defence of that country where all my 
property and connections are, but there are powerful 
objections to my leaving this army. One only will I 
name, which is, that no other person has power to com- 
mand the French troops, who are now about to form a 
junction with this army. Let it suffice for me to add, 
that I am acting on a great scale, that temporary evils 
must be endured, and that I am not without hope that 

the tables may be turned. 

"George Washington." 

" The Father of his Country" calls his African slaves 
" my negroes." What equality existed between W^ash- 
ington and his negroes'? The distance between them 
was as great as it is possiblo for human beings to be sepa- 



THE NEGRO S ORIGINAL CONDITION. 21 



rated fi:om each other in rank and condition of Hfe. He 
was of the highest type of the European race — they his 
abject slaves — and yet no man can say that Washington 
degraded these members of the human family, and reduced 
them to that humble place beside him. Both were born 
to the station in which we find them. Washington in- 
herited these negroes from his ancestors. His ancestors 
purchased them from the English merchants, who bought 
them of those who held them as slaves in Africa. 
Could they have looked into the wretched country from 
whence they came, they would have rejoiced that Provi- 
dence ordered their birth in the country of Washington, 
that he was their master instead of the king of Dahomey 
or Ashantee, or any other king or chief on the whole 
African continent, and thus would the millions now in 
servitude rejoice were they to behold their brethren in 
the land of barbarism and death. 

At a meeting of the Missionary Board in New York, 
May, 1860, Rev. Daniel Lord, of South Africa, said he 
had a home 1200 miles beyond the Cape of Good Hope, 
and ten miles inland, from which he could see the com- 
merce of the world going to and fro on the Indian 
Ocean. To the west he looked through thousands of 
miles of unbroken heathenism. Though these vessels 
had been sailing over that track for 300 years, yet he had 
talked with thousands who, for the first time, had ever 
heard the name of Jesus. He had heard this week men 
talk of the rights of humanity. That was good : liberty 
for four millions of men in bondage. God give them 
liberty, but God give Hberty to 150,000,000 of their 
brethren in that land from which they were brought. 
These people were so barbarous that if a woman had 
two children at a time, one of them was killed because 



22 BARBARITIES PRACTISED IN AFRICA. 



she could not do her work with the two. Contrast the 
heathen in Africa to the Christian. He knew a young 
man who gave all that he had to buy his sister out of 
slavery in Africa. The heathen African slept on the 
ground in their huts between the sheep and the calves." 
The people in Africa worship reptiles. They have a 
large-house for the snakes. The missionary peeped in and 
saw hundreds of them. They are fed by the natives 
with fowls and milk. Sometimes, when pressed by 
hunger, they go into the huts of the natives. Not a 
great while ago, a huge boa entered a hut and seized a 
poor infant which was playing on the floor. The mother 
rushed in at the cry, and beheld it wrapped in the fatal 
coil ; but it was her god who embraced it, and she could 
only beseech him not to eat her child till it was quite 
dead. A missionary. Rev. Joel Parker, said a few years 
ago : " The Africans were first taken from a home where 
they had been degraded by the bondage of many cen- 
turies. They were brought hither, not to a heavier 
bondage, but to a lighter one, for American slavery is 
more tolerable than African slavery. So that if you 
take 10,000 born here in slavery and compare them with 
10,000 born there, the comparison is in favor of the 
American slave. Men have endeavored to prove that 
the holding of a slave is evidence of guilt. The effort 
has failed. The word of God is not bound. False in- 
terpretations cannot gain general credence, and the 
American people will never be convinced by the seeming 
of logic that thousands of our slaveholding brethren are 
not excellent, humane, and even Christian men, fearing 
God and keeping his commandments." 

And yet the American people North have been con- 



WASHINGTON CONSIDERED SLAVES PROrERTY. 23 



Yinccd by infidels, who reject the Bible altogether, that 
to hold a negro in slavery is a sin of the deepest dye. 

In 1783, Washington wrote to Sir Guy Carle ton, as 
follows : 

" Sir — In my letter of April 4, 1 enclosed to your excel- 
lency a copy of resolutions of Congress, instructing me 
in three points, which appeared necessary to carry into 
effect the terms of the treaty between Great Britain and 
the United States, respecting the carrying away of any 
negroes or other property of the people. I was sur- 
prised to hear that an embarkation had already taken 
place, in which a large number of negroes had been 
taken away. I cannot conceal from you that my private 
opinion is, that the measure is totally different from the 
letter and spirit of the treaty, but leaving the decision 
to our respective sovereigns, I find it my duty to signify 
my readiness to take any measures which may be expe- 
dient to prevent the future carrying away of any negroes 
or other property of the American people. 

"Geokge Washington." ■; 

In 1791, he wrote to James Seagrove, Collector of the 
Port at St. Mary's, as follows: 

" Sir — The confidence which your character inclines me 
to place in you has induced me to commit to your care 
the enclosed letter from the Secretary of State to Gov- 
ernor Quesada [Spanish Governor], and the negotiation 
consequent thereon. Your first care will be to arrest the 
farther reception of fugitive slaves; your next, to obtain 
restitution of those slaves who have fled to Florida, and to 
procure the Governor's orders for the general relinquish- 
ment of all fugitive slaves who were the property of 

citizens of the United States. 

"George Washington. V-^" 



24 WHY SLAVES ARE CALLED PERSONS 



Here is proof that Washington considered slaves as 
the property of the American people. 

In his debates with the immortal Douglas, Abraham 
Lincoln said : "An inspection of the Constitution will 
show that the right of property in a slave is not dis- 
tinctly and expressly affirmed in it. Neither the word 
slave, or slavery, is to be found in the Constitution, nor 
the word property, even in any connection with language 
alluding to the things slave or slavery, and, wherever 
in that instrument the slave is alluded to, he is called a 
person, and this mode of alluding to slaves was em- 
ployed on purpose to exclude from the Constitution the 
idea that there could be property in man." 

Now what a delusion the Republican leaders threw 
over the minds of the American people ! In the Life 
of John Adams, one of the signers of the " Declaration," 
by his grandson, Charles F. Adams, it is said: 

" In the plans formed for the first Confederation, a 
question touched the proper apportionment of the public 
charges. The plan adopted was to base it exclusively 
on land and buildings. New England would have it 
extended to other property, included in the term 
African slaves. The other States, in which this descrip- 
tion of population was mostly found, preferred then, to 
except themselves from charge, by considering them ex- 
clusively as persons. This distinction should always be 
borne in mind in connection with the lano:ua":e of the 
Constitution, framed eleven years afterwards." 

There, Mr. Lincoln, you have the reason why slaves 
are called persons, instead of property. After the Con- 
stitution was formed, it was submitted to all the States 
for their adoption. While they were examining and 
considering its merits, James Madison, Alexander Ham- 



IN THE CONSTITUTION. 25 



ilton, and John Jay, wrote an explanation of every 
Article, and published their expositions in a paper called 
" The Federalist." In this paper is found the following, 
by James Madison : 

" Slaves are considered by some as property, and not 
as persons. They ought, therefore, to be comprehended 
in estimates of taxation which are founded on property, 
and to be excluded from representation which is regu- 
lated by a census of persons. The true state of the case 
is, they partake of both these qualities, being considered 
by our laws, in some respects, as persons, and in other 
respects, as property. The Federal Constitution decides 
with great propriety on the case of our slaves, when 
it views them in the mixed character of persons and of 
property. This is, in fact, their true character. May 
not some surprise be expressed that those who re- 
proach the Southern States with the barbawus policy of 
considering as property a part of their human brethren, 
should themselves contend that the government ought 
to consider this unfortunate race more completely in the 
light of property than the very laws of the South, of 
which they complain'?" 

James Madison has been quoted as saying there 
could be no such thing as property in man. In the 
Virginia debates upon the adoption of the Constitution 
he remarks : " One clause secures us that property we 
now possess. It says, 'No person held to service or 
labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into 
another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation 
thereof, be discharged from such service or labor ; but 
shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom 
such service or labor is due.' " This clause was expressly 
inserted, to enable owners of slaves to reclaim them. 



26 PATRICK henry's VIEWS OF SLAVERY. 



No power is given to the general government to inter- 
pose with respect to property in slaves now held by the 
Statt-s. Thus did Madison endeavor to bring his State 
into the Union, by assuring the people that the govern- 
ment would never interpose with respect to property in 
slaves. Better for Virginia, and the other Southern 
States, had they remained separate and independent, than 
to have had the Government fallen into the hands of 
Abraham Lincoln and the Abolitionists, now desolating 
their soil ! 

Patrick Henry, the great Virginia patriot, who de- 
claimed against Great Britain, and ended an eloquent 
speech with the oft-repeated sentence, "As for me, give 
me liberty or give me death !" said in this convention, 
"As much as I deplore slavery, I see that prudence 
forbids its abolition. I repeat that it would rejoice my 
very soul that every one of my fellow-beings was 
emancipated. But is it practicable, by any human 
means, to liberate them without producing the most 
dreadful consequences 1 We ought to possess them in 
the manner we inherited them from our ancestors, as 
their manumission is incompatible with the felicity of 
our country. But we ought to soften, as much as possi- 
ble, the rigor of their unhappy fate. I wish this 
property, therefore, to be guarded." Such was the de- 
cision of Patrick Henry, when it was suggested to the 
people of Virginia that the general government, if they 
should consent to come into a Union with the North, 
might attempt to emancipate their slaves. He says, 
" This property, as well as every other property of the 
people of Virginia, is in jeopardy, and put in the hands 
of those who have no similarity of situation with us." 
How fearful, how sensitive, how apprehensive of danger, 



THE QUESTION OF REPRESENTATION. 27 



were the people of Virginia, that the Eastern States 
would take advantage if they put themselves in their 
power. Another gentleman, Mr. Galloway, asked, " If 
we must manumit our slaves, what country shall we send 
them to "? It is impossible for us to be happy if, after 
manumission, they are to stay among us." This har- 
monizes with Thomas Jefferson's belief that the two 
races could not live under the same government equally 
free. 

In the North Carohna debates it was said by Mr. 
Davie that the Eastern States had great jealousies on 
the subject of representation. They insisted that their 
horses and cows were equally entitled to representation 
as the negroes — that the one was property as well as the 
other. In South Carolina, Hon. Mr. Lowndes said : " It 
has been remarked that this new government was to be 
considered as an experiment. He really was afraid it 
would prove a flital one to our peace and happiness. An 
experiment ! what 1 risk the loss of political existence on 
experiments 1 So far from having any expectation of 
success from such an experiment he believed that when 
this new Constitution should be adopted, the sun of the 
Southern States would set, never to rise again. To 
prove this, he said that six of the Eastern States formed 
a majority in the House of Representatives. Now, was 
it consonant with reason, with wisdom, with policy, to 
suppose, in a legislature, where a majority of persons 
sat whose interests were greatly different from ours, that 
we had the smallest chance of receiving adequate ad- 
vantages 1 Certainly not. The Eastern States drew 
their means of subsistence, in a great measure, from 
their shipping ; and on that head they had been par- 
ticularly careful not to allow of any burdens ; they were 



28 Washington's address to the 



not to pay tonnage or duties, no, not even the form of 
clearing out ; all ports were free and open to them. 
Why then call this a reciprocal bargain, which took all 
from one party to bestow it on the other 1 They don't 
like our slaves, because they have so few themselves, 
and therefore want to exclude us from this great ad- 
vantage. The nature of our climate, and the flat, 
swampy situation of our country obliges us to cultivate 
our lands with negroes, and without them South CaroHna 
would soon be a desert waste." 

General Pinckney decided the question by telling the 
people that the " general government could never eman- 
cipate our negroes, for no such authority is granted, as 
the general government has no powers but what are ex- 
pressly granted by the Constitution, and all rights not 
expressed are reserved by the several States." 

And thus assured, the hitherto free, sovereign, and 
independent States, south of the Potomac, united in a 
bond of union with the sovereign and independent States 
north and east, on the great continent of America. 

On the 8th of June, 1783, Washington addressed to 
the Governors of the several States the paternal and 
affectionate letter which follows : 

" The citizens of America, placed in the most enviable 
condition as the sole lords and proprietors of a vast tract 
of continent, comprehending all the various soils and 
climates of the world, and abounding with all the neces- 
saries and conveniences of life, are now, by the late satis- 
factory pacification, acknowledged to be possessed of 
absolute freedom and independence. They are from 
this period to be considered as the actors on a most con- 
spicuous theatre, which seems to be peculiarly desig- 
nated by Providence for the display of human greatness 



GOVERNORS OF THE SEVERAL STATES. 29 



and felicity. Here they are not only surrounded with 
every thing which can contribute to the completion of 
private and domestic enjoyment, but heaven has crowned 
all its other blessings by giving a fairer opportunity for 
political happiness than any other nation has been 
favored with. Nothing can illustrate these observations 
more forcibly than a recollection of the happy conjunc- 
ture of times and circumstances under which our republic 
assumed its rank among the nations. 

"The foundation of our empire was not laid in the 
gloomy age of ignorance and superstition, but at an 
epoch when the rights of mankind were better under- 
stood and more clearly defined, than at any former 
period. The researches of the human mind after social 
happiness have been carried to a great extent, the 
treasures of knowledge acquired by the labors of phi- 
losophers, sages, and legislators, through a long succession 
of years, arc laid open to our use, and their collected 
wisdom may be happily employed in the establishment 
of our forms of government. The free cultivation of 
letters, and above all, the pure and benign light of reve- 
lation, have had a meliorating infiuence on mankind and 
increased the blessings of society. At this auspicious 
period the United States came into existence as a nation, 
and if their citizens should not be completely free and 
happv, the fault will be entirely their own." 

To those who say that our fathers lived in a barbarous 
age, the above is an answer. The treasures of knowl- 
edge acquired by all the Grecian and Roman legislators 
and philosophers were laid open for their use ; and, above 
all, the Bible was theirs, and there is but one revelation 
from God to man. If the citizens of the United States were 
not happy the fault was indeed their own. The nation 



30 PRAYER FOR BROTHERLY AFFECTION". 



prospered as our fathers made it. It rose to the hig^hest 
rank among the nations of the earth, and would have 
continued to prosper had it not been for the causes set 
forth in the following pages. 

As Moses gave laws to Israel, so Washington gave 
laws to America. He made, with the assistance of the 
ablest in the land, a Constitution or code of laws for the 
government of the people, and, with the other laws, there 
were those with regard to slavery. As the founders of 
the Christian religion taught both by precept and exam- 
ple, so did the founders of the American republic. To 
those States which had dispensed with negro slavery, 
it was said: 

"Thou shalt not entice a slave to leave his master, 
and shall restore to his owner the fugitive who may 
escape unto thee. Thou shalt not excite them to in- 
surrection, but shall aid in suppressing all rising of the 
slaves." 

And Washington said : " I now make it my most 
earnest prayer that God would incline the hearts of the 
citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedi- 
ence to government, to entertain a brotherly affection 
and love for one another, for their fellow-citizens of the 
United States at large ; that he would most graciously be 
pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy and 
to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and 
pacific temper of mind which were the characteristics 
of the Divine Author of our blessed religion, without 
an humble imitation of whose example in these things 
we can never hope to be a happy nation." 

" The Lord spake to Moses, and said : ' Say unto the 
people of Israel, if ye walk in my statutes, and keep 
my commandments to do them, I will give peace in the 



EARLY JEALOUSIES. 31 



land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make you 
afraid, neither shall the sword go through your land. 
But if ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all 
ray commandments, ye shall perish among the heathen, 
and the land of your enemies shall eat you up, and they 
that arc left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in 
your enemies' land. Behold, I set before you, this day, 
life and death, a blessing and a curse." 

The sword has gone through our land, and thousands 
have pined away in our enemies' country : a curse has 
come upon us — the curse of war and bloodshed. Who 
are the people that have broken the commands of Wash- 
ington, and the laws of our fathers 1 Is the wickedness 
all on the side of the people against whom our govern- 
ment is sending forth war and desolation'? Let the 
facts of history answer. 

In March, 1790, General Washington received the 
following letter from Dr. Stuart of Virginia : 

" Dear Sir — A spirit of jealousy, which may become 
dangerous to the Union, seems to be growing fast among 
us. Colonel Lee tells me that many who were strong 
supporters of the government are changing their senti- 
ments, from a conviction of impracticability of union 
with States whose interests are so dissimilar to those of 
Virginia. The late application to Congress respecting 
slaves will certainly tend to promote this spirit. It 
gives particular umbrage that the Quakers should be so 
busy in this matter." 

Washington answered the letter and endeavored to 
reconcile the people of Virginia, by telling them that 
" The memorial of the Quakers, and a very mal apropos 
one it was, had at length been put to sleep, and would 
scarcely awake before the year 1808." 



82 FIRST PETITIONS FOR THE 



Daniel Webster, in speaking of this subject, says: 
" When the present Constitution of the United States 
was submitted for the ratification of the people, there 
were some who imagined that the powers of the new 
government might, perhaps, in some possible mode, be 
exerted in measures tending to the abolition of slavery. 
This suggestion attracted much attention in the Southern 
Conventions. At the very first Congress petitions were 
presented praying Congress to abolish slavery. The 
House of Representatives referred these petitions to a 
select committee, consisting of Mr. Foster of New 
Hampshire, Mr. Gerry of Massachusetts, Mr. Hunting- 
ton of Connecticut, Mr. Lawrence of New York, Mr. 
Sinnickson of New Jersey, Mr. Hartley of Pennsylvania, 
and Mr. Parker of Virginia, all of them Northern men 
but the last. This committee made a report as follows : 
' Resolved, That Congress have no authority to interfere 
in the emancipation of slaves, or in the treatment of 
them in any of the States, it remaining with the several 
States alone to provide rules and regulations therein, 
which humanity and true policy may require.' 

" This resolution received the sanction of Congress 
as early as March, 1790, and they agreed to insert the 
resolutions in their journals ; and from that day to this 
(1830) it has never been maintained or contended that 
Congress had any authority to interfere with the con- 
dition of slaves in the several States. The fears of the 
South, whatever fears they might have entertained, 
were allayed and quieted by this early decision." 

General Washington wrote to the Governor of Rhode 
Island as soon as that State and North Carolina accepted 
the Constitution, and joined the other States. " Since 
the bond of Union is now complete, and we once more 



ABOLISHMENT OF SLAVERY. gg 



consider ourselves as one family, it is hoped tliat re- 
proaches will cease, and prejudices be done away, for if 
we mean to support the liberty and independence which 
has cost us so much blood and treasure, we must drive 
away the demon of party spirit and local reproach. 
The introduction of the Quaker memorial was not only 
ill timed but occasioned a great waste of time." 

The local reproach means the same as that used by 
Madison when he speaks of those who reproach the 
South for slavery. "Washington's whole aim and ambi- 
tion was to have his family of white children. North and 
South, live in happiness and peace together in the Union 
which was now completed. Since we once more con- 
sider ourselves as one family, if we mean to retain our 
liberty and independence, we must drive away the 
demon of party spirit, and not reproach one another — 
" frowning upon every attempt to alienate any portion 
of our country from the rest." 

When the petitions were sent to the first Congress 
praying for the abolition of slavery, Mr. Smith, a mem- 
ber from the South, made a speech, of which the follow- 
ing is an extract : " The Southern people might consider 
the toleration of the Quakers an injury to thecommunity, 
because in time of war they would not defend their 
country from the enemy, and in time of peace they 
were doing all in their power to excite the slaves in 
the Southern States to insurrection : notwithstandin<r 
which tlie people of these States have not required the 
assistance of Congress to exterminate the Quakers. 
The Northern States knew the Southern States had 
slaves before they confederated with them. If they had 
such an abhorrence of slavery, why did they not reject 
our alliance \ The truth was, that the best informed 
3 



34 PERSONAL LIBERTY BILLS 



citizens of the North knew that slavery was so ingrafted 
into the policy of the Southern States, that it could not 
be eradicated without tearing up by the roots their 
happiness and prosperity — that if it were an evil, it was 
one for which there was no remedy, and, therefore, like 
wise men, they acquiesced in it. We, therefore, made 
a compromise on both sides ; we took each other with 
our mutual bad habits and respective evils for better or 
worse ; the Northern States adopted us with our slaves, 
and we adopted them with their Quakers. There was 
then an implied contract between the Northern and 
Southern people that no step should be taken to injure 
the property of the Southern people or to disturb their 
tranquillity." 

The Hon. Mr. Charles Diven, M.C., explains this 
contract more fully in a speech upon the Personal 
Liberty Bill attempted to be passed in the Legislature 
of New York. He says : 

"The Constitution is in the nature of compact between 
independent States, by which a government was created 
for specific purposes, mutually beneficial ; but was con- 
fined in its powers to these specific purposes. In all 
other respects the States retained their sovereignty. 
No one State was to become responsible for the laws of 
another ; we have no right to make laws for South 
Carolina, consequently we are in no respect responsible 
for her laws, nor has she any right to make laws for us. 
Will it be said that she has no right to complain if we 
pass this law 1 The answer is, that by the compact we ex- 
pressly agreed not to pass such laws : we agreed solemnly 
that we should respect this law of hers, by which she re- 
cognized this right in slaves. These laws existed at the 



PASSED BY NORTHERN STATES. 



time of the compact, with a perfect knowledge of their 
existence. The South held slaves without a Union. The 
Union did not give them this power. Is the State of 
New York prepared to break the compact, as it certainly 
will by the passage of this biU f 

A great many Northern States passed the Personal 
Liberty Bill: therefore the Northern people broke the 
compact that held the Union together long before the 
South seceded. All who favored such a bill broke the 
commands of the Father of his Country. They violated 
the national compact, and trod under their feet the 
Constitution wliich Washington signed his name to, 
when first elected President of the United States. In 
1789, he made an inaugural address, in which he says: 

" No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore 
the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men, 
more than the people of the United States. Every step 
by which they have advanced to the character of an in- 
dependent nation, seems to have been distinguished by 
some token of Providential agency. There is no truth 
more firmly established tlian that there exists, in the 
course and economy of nature, an indissoluble union 
between virtue and liappiness, and I behold in the char- 
acters selected to adopt the measures of government, 
which it is made the duty of the President to recom- 
mend, the surest pledges tliat the foundation of our 
policy wdll be hud in the pure and immutable principles 
of private morality, and the pre-eminence of free 
government be exemplified by all the attributes which 
can win the affections of the citizens, and command the 
respect of the world. We ought to be persuaded that 
the propitious smiles of heaven can never be expected 



36 Washington's letter to Robert morris. 



on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and 
right which Heaven itself has ordained." 

" Order is Heaven's first law, and this confest, 
Some are, and must be, greater than the rest." 

These " eternal rules of order and right" Washing- 
ton illustrated both by precept and example. An illus- 
tration of his principles, and his ideas of justice and 
order, may be found in the following letter to Robert 
Morris, of Philadelphia, April, 1786: 

" Dear Sir — I give you the trouble of this letter at the 
instance of Mr. Dalby, of Alexandria, who is called to 
Philadelphia to attend what he conceives to be a vexa- 
tious lawsuit, respecting a slave of his, whom a society 
of Quakers in the city, formed for such purposes, have 
attempted to liberate. From Mr. Dalby's statement of 
the matter, it should seem that this society is not only 
acting repugnantly to justice, so far as its conduct con- 
cerns strangers, but in my opinion impolitically with 
respect to the State, the city in particular, without being 
able, except by acts of tyranny and oppression, to accom- 
plish its own ends. He says the conduct of tliis society 
is not sanctioned by law. Had the case been otherwise, 
whatever my opinion of the law might have been, my 
respect for the policy of the State would, on this occa- 
sion, have appeared in my silence, because, against 
the penalty of promulgated laws, one may guard ; but 
there is no avoiding the snares of individuals or private 
societies. If the practice of this society is not discoun- 
tenanced, none of those whose misfortune it is to have 
slaves as attendants, will visit the city if they can possi- 
bly avoid it, because, by so doing, they hazard their 
property, or they must be at the expense (and this wiU 



CONDEMNS ENTICING OF SLAVES. ^ 37 



not always succeed) of providing servants of anotlier de- 
scription." 

Here the Father of his Country places an emphatic 
condemnation on all societies or persons who would 
entice a slave from his master. He pronounces their 
acts repugnant to justice, and says that it is only by 
tyTanny and oppression they gain the Hberty of the slave, 
which he calls the property of his master. Now, it is their 
acts of tyranny that constitute men and rulers tyrants — 
by their acts of oppression that they are called oppressors. 
Then what a band of tyrants and oppressors have been 
formed in the Northern States to steal away the property 
of their white brethren South ! Thirty thousand slaves 
in Canada alone have been stolen or enticed from South- 
ern people by Northern aboUtionists — a great gang of 
negro-stealers, whom Washington himself pronounced 
guilty of tyranny and oppression, holding themselves up 
before the world as models of justice and philanthropy, 
and denouncing slaveholders as the worst of men. 
"Washington says : " When slaves who are happy and 
contented with their present masters, are tampered with, 
and seduced to leave them, when masters are taken una- 
wares by these practices, when a conduct of this kind 
begets discontent on one side, and resentment on the 
other, and when it happens to fall on a man whose 
purse will not measure with that of the society, and he 
r loses his property for want of means to defend it, it is 
oppression in such a case, and not humanity in any, 
because it introduces more evils than it can cure." 

He says it is oppression to seduce away slaves from 
their masters, who have not the means of defending their 
property, even when they are not happy and contented. 
It seems Washington thought there were contented and 



38 SLAVEHOLDERS BRINGING THEIR SERVANTS 



Lappy slaves ; but even when they were unhappy it was 
not humanity to take them from their masters, because 
it would introduce more evils than it could cure. Thus 
we have the testimony of the Father of his Country, 
who was trying to act indeed as a father to his chil- 
dren, that the abolitionists have not been performing 
acts of humanity in any case, for that they have intro- 
duced more evils than they have cured. 

Washington speaks of the acts of the society not 
being sanctioned by law. That was true. Thomas 
Benton, who published the Debates in Congress, says: 
"Public opinion was against the abduction of slaves, 
and if any one was seduced from his owner it was done 
furtively and secretly, as any other moral offence would 
be committed. State laws favored the owner, and to a 
greater extent than the act of Congress, called the 
Fugitive Slave law, did or could." In Pennsylvania 
there was an act passed in 1780, and only repealed in 
1847, discriminating between the traveller and sojourner, 
and the permanent resident, allowing the former to 
remain six months in the State before his slaves would 
become subject to the emancipation laws, which are as 
follows : 

"No man or woman of any nation or color, except 
the negroes and mulattoes who shall be registered as 
aforesaid, shall at any time hereafter be deemed ad- 
judged or holden within the territories of this Common-^ 
wealth as slaves or servants for life, except the domestic 
slaves attending upon delegates in Congress from other 
American States, foreign ministers and consuls, and 
persons passing through or sojourning in this State, 
provided such slaves be not retained in this State longer 
than six months." 



INTO FREE STATES. 39 



The slave then of Mr. Dalby was not free by coming 
into Pennsylvania, and up to 1847 the Southern people 
cx)uld travel with their slaves through the State or 
remain six months without losing them by law. New 
York had the same act, only varying in time. While 
these two acts were in force and supported by public 
opinion, the traveller and sojourner was safe with his 
slaves in those States, and the same in other free States. 

It is a fact to be remembered, that Washington 
claimed the right of the Southern people to travel 
through the States with their slaves without running 
the hazard of their being enticed away by abolitionists, 
and when the South since claimed the same privilege 
they asked no more than the Father of the Country did 
before them. 

Daniel S. Dickinson, in a speech made in 1860, said: 
"This Union was founded in mutual friendship and 
regard. In 1840, the law called the nine months law 
was repealed. It permitted Southern brethren, who 
visited the State of New York, to bring with them their 
servants and remain nine months, and they were as 
fully protected as they were in tlie States from whence 
they came. In 1840 that act was repealed. I wa» 
then a member of the Senate, and resisted the repeal 
of that law to the best of my ability., I believe that 
was the first trouble between the North and the South. 
The Federal laws and Constitution are well enough. 
The South insists upon the principle of the equality of 
the States, and they are entitled to it. The Constitu- 
tion makes them equal; the law makes them equal; 
they are equals in the sight of honest men, and are 
equals in the sight of God, and woe be to him who 
undertakes to degrade them and trample them down." 



40 DANIEL WEBSTER UPON 



While this question was being discussed two years 
before the law was repealed, William H. Seward made 
the following remarks: "Being desirous to be entirely 
candid in this communication, it is proper that I should 
add that I am not convinced it would be either wise, 
expedient or humane to declare to our fellow-citizens 
of the Southern States, that if they travel to or from, 
or pass through the State of New York, they shall not 
bring with them the attendants whom custom, or edu- 
cation, or habit may have rendered necessary to them. 
I have not been able to discover any good object to be 
attained by such an act of inhospitality. It certainly 
can work no injury to us, nor can it be injurious to the 
unfortunate beings held in bondage to permit them, 
once perhaps in their lives, and at most on occasions 
few and far between, to visit a country where slavery is 
unknown. I can even conceive of benefits to the great 
cause of human liberty from the cultivation of this 
intercourse with the South. It is sufficient to say that 
such an exclusion could have no good effect practically, 
and would accomplish nothing in the great cause of 
human liberty." But this act of inhospitality was 
passed, and all intercourse with the people of the South 
ended with it. 

General Washington was President of the Convention 
that framed the Constitution, and affixed his name to 
that instrument which contained the Fugitive Slave Law. 
Daniel Webster said in regard to this, in a speech made 
a year before he died : 

" There has been an ancient practice for a century for 
aught I know, according to which, fugitives from service, 
whether apprentices at the North or slaves at the South, 
should be restored. Massachusetts had restored fugitive 



THE FUGITI7E SLAVE LAW. 



ii 



slaves to Virginia long before the adoption of the Con- 
stitution. And it was held that any man could pursue 
his slave and take him wherever he could find him. 
Under this state of things it was expressly stipulated in 
the plainest language, and there it stands — sophistry 
cannot gloss it, it cannot be erased from the page of 
the Constitution — there it stands, that ' persons held to 
service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, 
escaping into another State, shall not, in consequence of 
any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such 
service or labor, but shall be delivered up upon claim of 
the party to whom such service is due.' Adopted with- 
out dissent, nowhere objected to, North or South, con- 
sidered as a matter of absolute right and justice to the 
Southern States, concurred in everywhere by every 
State that adopted the Constitution, we look in vain for 
any opposition from Massachusetts to Georgia. Then 
this being the case, this being the provision of the Con- 
stitution, soon after Congress had organized in General 
Washington's time, it was found necessary to pass a law 
to carry that provision of the Constitution into effect. 
Such a law was prepared and passed. It is said it was 
drawn by Mr. Cabot of Massachusetts. It was supported 
by him and Mr. Goodhue and Mr. Sedgwick of ^lassa- 
chusetts, and generally by all the free States. So it 
went on until some fourteen years ago, when some of 
the free States passed laws prohibiting their own 
officers and magistrates from executing this law of Con- 
gress under heavy penalties. They said, we shall not 
execute the laws ; no runaway slave shall be restored. 
But here was the constitutional compact, here was 
the stipulation as solemn as words could form it, and 



42 WEBSTER PRONOUNCES ABOLITIONISTS 



which every member of Congress, every officer from 
Governors down to Constables, had sworn to support. 

"Well, under this state of things, in 1850 I was of 
tlie opinion that common justice and good faith called 
upon ns to make a law, fair, equitable, just, that should 
be calculated to carry this constitutional provision into 
effect, and give the Southern States what they are en- 
titled to, and what was intended originally they should 
receive. It was no concession, it was yielding nothing, 
giving up nothing. When called upon to fulfil a com- 
pact, the question is, Will you fulfil it ] The law of 
1850 was more favorable for the fugitive than the law 
of 1793, passed under General Washington's adminis- 
tration. And everywhere, by all judges, it has been 
pronounced to be a constitutional law. So say Judge 
Nelson, Woodbury, and all the rest, so far as I know. 
So says the unanimous opinion of Massachusetts herself, 
expressed by as good a court as ever sat in Massachu- 
setts, its present Supreme Court, and so says everybody 
eminent for learning and good judgment, without dis- 
sent of judicial opinion, everywhere. 

" And yet this law is opposed, violently opposed — not 
by bringing the question into court. These lovers of 
human liberty, these friends of the slave — the fugitive 
slave — don't put their hands in their pockets, and draw 
funds to conduct lawsuits and try the question; they 
are not in that habit much. That is not the way they 
show their devotion to liberty of any kind. But they 
meet and pass resolutions, they resolve that the law is 
oppressive, unjust, and should not be executed at any 
rate. This has been said in the States of New York, 
Massachusetts, and Ohio over and over again. This was 
the language of a Convention at Worcester, in Syracuse, 



GUILTY OF TREASON. 43 



and elsewhere. And for this they pledged their lives, 
their fortunes and their sacred honor. Now, gentlemen, 
these proceedings, I say it upon my professional reputa- 
tion, are distinctly treasonable. And the act of taking 
away Shadrack from the public authorities in Boston 
was an act of clear treason. I speak this in the hearing 
of men who are lawyers ; T speak it out to the country ; I 
say it everywhere on my professional reputation : it was 
treason and nothing else. If men get together, and 
combine together, and resolve that they will oppose a 
law of the government, not in any one case, but in all 
cases — I say, if they resolve to resist this law, and carry 
that purpose into effect by resisting the application of 
the law in any one case, that, sir,, is treason. The reso- 
lution itself, unacted on, is not treason ; it only manifests 
a treasonable purpose. AVhen this purpose is proclaimed, 
and it is proclaimed that it will be carried into effect by 
force of arms — or numbers — in any one case, that con- 
stitutes a case looking to war against the Union." 

Now, by the ablest lawyer in the United States, the 
abolitionists of the North have been pronounced eitlier 
guilty of treason or of treasonable proceedings and pur- 
poses ; and when the affairs of this nation come to be ad- 
justed, they deserve the same punishment that is meted 
out to traitors in the Southern States, and the Almighty 
will hold them responsible for their share in dissolving 
this Union, just the same as he will the traitors South. 

Joshua Giddings says in 1846: "Our people, under 
the Constitution, and under the law of 1793, are pro- 
hibited, first, from protecting the slave against an arrest 
by the master ; secondly, from concealing the slave from 
the master ; and, thirdly, from rescuingthe slave after his 



44 BREAKING PLIGHTED FAITH 



arrest. If we do either of these acts we violate our 
constitutional compact." 

Wayland's Science of Moral Law, upon the subject of 
Contracts, says: 

"A contract is a mutual promise — that is, we promise 
to do one thing, on the condition that another person 
does another. Hence, after a contract is made, while 
the other party performs his part ; we are under obliga- 
tion to perform our part ; but if either party fail, the 
other is, by the failure of the condition essential to the 
contract, liberated. But this is not all. Not only is 
the one party liberated, by the failure of the other party 
to perform his part of the contract ; the first, has, more- 
over, upon the second, a claim for damages, to the amount 
of what he may have suffered by such failure. The 
obligation to veracity is precisely the same, under what 
relations soever it may be formed. It is as binding be- 
tween individuals and society, on both parts, as it is 
between individuals. There is no more excuse for a 
society, when it violates its obligation to an individual, 
or for an individual, when he violates his obligation to a 
society, than in any other case of deliberate falsehood. 
By how much more are societies or communities bound 
to fidelity, in their engagements with each other, since 
the faith of treaties is the only barrier which interposes 
to shield nations from the appeal to bloodshed in every 
case of collision of interests ! And the obligation is the 
same, under what circumstances soever nations may 
treat with each other. A civilized people have no right 
to violate its solemn obligations because the other party 
is uncivilized. A strong nation has no right to lie to a 
weak nation. The simple fact, that two communities 
of moral agents have entered into engagements, binds 



A BREACH OF THE MORAL LAW. 45 



both of them equally in the sight of their common 
Creator. 

" Men may mystify before each other, and they may 
stupefy the monitor in their own bosoms by throwing 
the blame of perfidy upon each other, but it is to be re- 
membered that they act in the presence of a Being with 
whom the night shineth as the day, and that they must 
appear before a tribunal where there will be no more 
shuffling." 

Hon. Henry S. Hilliard, of Alabama, in a speech at 
the Cooper Institute, in 1859, in reply to Hon. Wm. H. 
Seward — that liberty is always right, and slavery is 
always wrong — said : " Now I deny his authority as a 
statesman to frame any such proposition. I deny his 
authority to engraft an anti-slavery policy upon a gov- 
ernment which embraces slaveholding and non-slave- 
holding States; and before he enthrones his ideal 
theories he must subvert the government and banish 
the Constitution of the United States. All that the 
South asks is, that the Constitution be upheld. All 
that she asks is, a full participation in the benefits of a 
common government, a full recognition of her rights, 
and a clear vindication of her honor. Does anybody 
believe that the Federal Government could have been 
constructed if it had been understood that the powers 
were to be directed against slavery in the States 1 The 
Constitution provides for the representation of slaves as 
an elementary part of the machinery of the government. 
How then can it be asserted that this is an anti-slavery 
government in its nature, and that it was put on the 
wrong tract forty years since by admitting a slaveholding 
State into the Union'? If the government could not 
have been constructed with an understanding that its 



46 THE NORTH GUILTY OF BREAKING 



policy was to be directed against slavery, is it not a fla- 
grant breach of good faith to seize the departments of 
that government, and turn them against if?" 

Henry Ward Beecher, in 1861, said: "I wish our 
fathers had stood out against what is called the com- 
promises of the Constitution, But our fathers signed 
the bond, and we accepted it. Can we afford to break 
it for even so magnificent a result as the emancipation 
of the slave ] Shall we rend the crystal instrument — 
the joy of the world and our pride 1 It is very easy to 
say, ' Now it is a state of war, let us declare emancipa- 
tion.' The war has not driven us out of our institu- 
tions. We are not ourselves in a state of rebellion. 
AVe cannot expect by destroying the Constitution to put 
down the rebelhon. If any one asks me whether a law 
or a constitution is superior to original principles of 
morahty and justice, I say, no ; but plighted faith is it- 
self in the nature of a sacred, moral principle. Our 
faith is given and must be kept. Wlien we cannot 
abide by our promise, then, in methods expressly pro- 
vided, we must withdraw the pledge and the agree- 
ments of the Constitution, and start apart as two sepa- 
rate people. We, who boast of our Constitution, must 
not violate it ourselves, in putting down those who vio- 
late it." 

According to the moral philosophy then of this pop- 
ular divine, whose opinions mth many are equal to 
sacred law, the government has actually violated the 
Constitution, and broken the bond signed by our fathers. 
" Phijhted faith is itself in the nature of a sacred moral 
principle. Our faith is given and must be kept." But 
Abraham Lincoln and his lawmakers have broken their 
plighted faith, and are therefore as morally guilty as 



THE BOND OF UNION. 47 



the South of rebellion against the Constitution of our 
fathers. " We are not ourselves in a state of rebellion," 
said Mr. Beecher in 1861, but in 1864 we are, for we 
have done the very acts which constitute rebellion, and 
by force of arms are subverting the government our 
fathers founded. 

The price of the Union which our fathers founded 
was the return of a negro now and then to his master. 
The price of the Union which the Republicans have 
founded is the enslavement of every able-bodied man 
between the ages of eighteen and forty-five to the 
United States Govcrament. Washington said the black 
slaves owed service to their masters — now, white slaves 
owe service to the government. The shackles fall from 
the black man only to be transferred to the white man. 

Washington said: "I behold in the characters selected 
to adopt tlio measures of government the surest pledges 
that the foundations of our national policy will be laid 
in the immutable principles of private morality ;" and 
he adds, that " the preservation of the sacred fire of lib- 
erty, and the destiny of the republican model of gov- 
ernment, are staked on the experiment intrusted to the 
hands of the American people." 

The Constitution was "the cement of the Union" by 
which all the States were held together, to which they 
all assented, and by which all were bound. Wusliing- 
ton believed the Constitution to be founded in justice, 
order and right ; that every step by which the United 
States had advanced to the cliaracter of an independent 
nation had been distinguished by some token of provi- 
dential agency. In his Farewell Address, in 1796, he 
still prayed that Heaven would continue to the people of 
the United States the choicest tokens of its beneficence ; 



48 Washington's farewell address. 



that their union and brotherly love might be perpetual; 
that the free Constitution, which was the work of their 
hands, might be sacredly m-aintained; that it was of 
infinite moment that they should properly estimate the 
immense value of their National Union; that they 
should speak of it as of the palladium of their political 
safety and prosperity, watching for its preservation with 
jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may sug- 
gest a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned, 
and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every 
attempt to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link 
together the various parts. — George Washington. 

When Washington retired from the public supervi- 
tion of the government he was the foremost in estab- 
lishing, an illustrious patriot and signer of the Declara- 
tion of Independence was placed by the people in the 
Presidential chair as the worthy successor of the Father 
of his Country, whom he eulogizes, in his first address 
to the people, as the man whose great actions had con- 
ducted the people of America to independence and 
peace ; to increasing wealth and unexampled prosperity ; 
who merited the highest gratitude of his people, and 
had secured immortal glory with posterity. 

He says: "With this great example before me, 
pledged to support the Constitution of the United 
States, I entertain no doubt of its continuance, and my 
mind is prepared, without hesitation, to lay myself 
under the most solemn obligations to support it to the 
utmost of my power. And may that Being who is 
supreme over all, the Patron of order, the Fountain of 
justice, and the Protector, in all ages of the world, of 
virtuous liberty, continue his blessing upon the nation 
and its government, and give it all possible success and 



Jefferson's inaugural address. 49 



duration consistent with the ends of his providence." — 
John Adams. 

Four years more, and tlie government is placed in 
the hands of another signer of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, and the immortal author of that immortal 
production. He says upon the great occasion : 

"A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful 
land ; traversing all the seas with the rich productions 
of their industry ; advancing rapidly to destinies beyond 
the reach of mortal eye — when I contemplate these 
transcendent objects, and see the honor, the happiness, 
and the hopes of my beloved coimtry, committed to the 
issue and the auspices of this day, I shrink from the 
contemplation, and humble myself before the magnitude 
of the undertaking. 

" Possessing a chosen country, with room enough for 
our descendants to the hundredth and thousandth gen- 
eration, acknowledging and adoring an overruling Provi- 
Jence — with all these blessings, what more is necessary 
to make us a happy and prosperous people "? The wis- 
dom of our sages and the blood of our heroes have been 
devoted to the attainment of these blessings — freedom 
of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of the 
person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and 
trial by jury, the supremacy of the civil over the mili- 
tary authority. These principles form the bright con- 
stellation which has gone before us. They should be 
the creed of our political faith, the touchstone to try the 
services of those we trust ; and should we wander from 
them in moments of error or alarm, let us hasten to 
retrace our steps, and to regain the road which leads to 
peace, hberty, and safety. 

" I shall need the favor of that Being who led our 



50 JAMES MADISON'S INAUGURAL. 



fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land, and 
planted them in a country flowing with all the neces- 
saries of life, who has covered our infancy with his 
providence and our riper years with his wisdom and 
power ; and I ask you to join in supplications with me, 
that he will so enlighten the minds of your servants, 
guide their counsels and prosper their measures, that 
whatsoever they do shall result in your good, and shall 
secure to you the peace, friendship, and approbation of 
all nations." — Thomas Jefferson. 

Another " signer" takes his seat and holds the reins 
of government, and he bestows upon his immediate 
predecessor the tribute of his sympathy, which he en- 
joyed in the benedictions of a beloved country, grate- 
fully bestowed for exalted talents, zealously devoted, 
through a long career, to the advancement of the highest 
interests and happiness of his country. " My confidence 
will be placed in the virtue of my fellow-citizens, next 
to that of the guardianship of that Almighty Being 
whose power regulates the destiny of nations, whose 
blessings have been so conspicuously dispensed to this 
rising republic, and to whom we are bound to address 
our devout gratitude for the past, and our fervent sup- 
])lications and hopes for the future." — James Madison. 

Twenty-eight years of unparalleled happiness and 
prosperity, brought about by the wisdom and virtue of 
the rulers of America, induced the people to select their 
fifth President from the same State where three of their 
former ones were born — and a Virginian ruled the nation 
for eight years longer. Soon after his inauguration he 
visited the Northern States, and was met throughout his 
tour by civic processions, military escorts, and enthusi- 
astic crowds. The Society of the Cincinnati, at New 



JAMES Monroe's. 51 



York, presented him with an address, and he referred, 
in the reply which he made, to the times of Washington, 
and his own former connection, in the battle-field, with 
many of the persons whom he saw before him. In reply 
to an address of the people of Maine, he said : " The 
further I advance in my progress in the country, the 
more I perceive that we are all Americans ; that we 
compose but one family ; that our republican institutions 
will be supported and perpetuated by the united zeal 
and patriotism of all. Nothing could give me greater 
satisfaction than to behold a perfect union among our- 
selves — a union which is necessary to restore to social 
intercourse its former charms (before the war with Eng- 
land in 1812), and to render our happiness as a nation 
unmixed and complete. To promote this desirable re- 
sult requires no compromise of principle, and I promise 
to give it my continued attention and my best endeav- 
ors." This assurance was honestly made and honestly 
carried out. When he retired from the Presidency in 
1825, he left the country in a high state of prosperity, 
and carried with him the respect and regard of the 
nation. Jefferson said : " If the soul of James Monroe 
was turned inside out, not a spot would be found on it." 
The very year which wafted the pure soul of James 
Monroe to the home of the purified in heaven, there was 
wafted over this nation the death-cry of the Union. The 
proffer of this pure, of this beloved patriot slaveholder, 
that the whole American people should compose but one 
family, that there should be a perfect union among our- 
selves, and that our happiness as a nation might be com- 
plete, was insolently rejected by the rebel leaders against 
the Union, whose cry went forth upon the breeze : " No 
Union with slaveholders." 



52' WM. LLOYD GARRISON PRONOUNCES 



Thirty-four years from the time that Washington ad- 
dressed his farewell to the American people, praying that 
the Constitution, which was the work of their hands, 
mio-ht be sacredly maintained, there arose a demon from 
the bottomless pit, bearing in his hands a banner with 
an inscription written in blood-red characters : " The 
Constitution of the United States is a Covenant with 
Death and an Agreement with Hell ;" and to that in- 
scription was signed the name of Wm. Lloyd Garrison. 

Washington told his people that it was of infinite 
moment that they should properly estimate the immense 
value of their national Union, and this rebel demon re- 
sponded : " The Union is a curse. If such a process 
were necessary to restore liberty to the captive, I would 
tread the Union and the Constitution which you formed 
under my feet as soon as I would a viper that stung 
me." " I know there is much declamation about the 
sacredness of the compact which you and your co-part- 
ners formed between the free and the slave States, upon 
the adoption of the Constitution. I recognize the com- 
pact with feelings of shame and indignation, and it will 
be held in everlasting infamy by the friends of justice 
and humanity throughout the world. You had no power 
to bind yourselves and your posterity for one hour by 
such an unholy alliance. It was not valid then, it is 
not valid now. Such a compact was in the nature of 
things null and void from the beginning." 

Washington said to his children : " I pray that your 
union and brotherly afi'ectioti may be perpetual. You 
have fought and triumphed together ; the independence 
and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, 
of joint efforts, of common dangers, sufferings and suc- 
cesses." 



THE CONSTITUTION A COVENANT "WITH DEATH. 53 



And Garrison replied: "We have no love for the 
white people of the South. We love the negroes — they 
are our brothers. Let the Union be accursed. God 
demands a ballot-box in which the slaveholders shall 
never cast a ballot." " They are men-stealers, robbers, 
and kidnappers, and, unless they repent, will have their 
part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." 

William Lloyd Garrison tells his o^vn story, in 1861, 
and we are to listen. He says : " I began this work in 
an uncompromising spirit. The slaveholder in vain 
pleaded that he held his slaves by a divine right, under 
both dispensations, under Moses and by the sanction of 
Jesus Christ. In vain he told me that his right to hold 
his slaves consisted in this, that he had bought them 
fairly, and that they were his property. In vain he 
pleaded that to emancipate his slaves would only be to 
make their condition wretched and miserable. To all 
his pleas I simply gave the lie, and declared that there 
could be no such thing as property in man — that it is 
the right of every slave to be instantly freed, and that 
therefore there could be no compromise whatever. I 
did not say, simply, that slavery, as a system, is wrong, 
but that the act of holding human beings as slaves was 
a sin against God — a crime of the deepest dye." (If so, 
then what criminals were Washington, Madison, Jeffer- 
son, Monroe, and Clay, the patriots who founded this 
best government on earth !) 

" If I had only said that slavery was an evil to be de- 
plored, and some time or other, in the distant future, to 
be abolished, he would have responded in the affirmative, 
and we should have had no controversy ; but it was the 
doctrine of instant, unconditional emancipation, that 
made him see, as it were, the handwriting on the wall. 



54 GOVERNOR WOLF WARNING THE PEOPLE 



At last I was brought to see the government of the 
country stood directly in the way of the slave's emanci- 
pation. AVhat could I do? If, in looking into the 
Constitution of the country, I saw there compromises 
and guarantees whereby the slaveholders were enabled 
to possess themselves of their slave property securely, 
and to extend and enlarge their slave system : what 
else could I do than to cry out against it, and pronounce 
such an instrument a covenant with death and an agree- 
ment with hell 1 And so the slave was put into one 
scale, and the Government, the Constitution, and the 
Union into the other. They kicked the beam and he 
outweighed them all." 

Garrison says he began the work of emancipating the 
slave by overthrowing the Government, the Constitution, 
and the Union. Mark, now, his progress from 1833, 
and see that Abraham Lincoln is his agent, and is 
carrying out his plan. It is said that the South com- 
menced to prepare for war thirty years ago. That 
evinced their wisdom and foresight, for against William 
Lloyd Garrison's abolition army they must fight or be 
destroyed. If Garrison should succeed in overthrowing 
the government which they had helped to form, their 
own destruction followed, of course. 

On the second day of December, 1835, George Wolf, 
Governor of Pennsylvania, sent forth his annual message, 
and contained therein was the following account of the 
progress which Garrison and his followers were making. 
He says: 

" For some time past, certain individuals, under the 
cognomen of abolitionists, have been laboring most 
assiduously to impress upon the public mind the necessity 
of the immediate emancipation of the slaves in the 



AGAINST THE ABOLITIONISTS. 55 



South. Inhabiting a State which was the first to abohsh 
slavery, we cannot be affected by the existing excite- 
ment otherwise than as members of the great American 
confederacy, and as forming a link in the great chain 
which binds it together. As such we are deeply in- 
terested in the peace, the unity, and integrity of the 
whole. This most delicate, and I may say unfortunate, 
subj( ct formed a part of the policy of the South, before 
and at the time of our great political association. The 
sages of the llevolution, to whom the arrangement and 
detail of the political compact were entrusted, were 
aware of its existence in the fullest extent. They were 
no strangers to the servile condition of the slave, nor to 
tlie burdens inflicted on the master. They were well 
convinced that there existed rights and interests which 
could not be abrogated or abridged without preventing 
forever the establishment of that union which they were 
anxious to cement. These rights were admitted, these 
interests conceded before the great bond of union 
which it was their purpose to form and perpetuate could 
be harmonized and reconciled. These rights remain as 
sacred now as they were then, and we are solemnly 
bound by the obligations to justice, humanity, and good 
faith, to abstain from interfering, in any manner, with 
them. 

" The present crusade against slavery is the offspring 
of fanaticism of the most dangerous and alarming 
character ; whicli, if not speedily checked, may kindle a 
fire which it may require the best blood in the country 
to quench, and engender feelings which may prove fatal 
to the Union. Let public opinion check the further 
progress of this misdirected enthusiast."— G^^or^e Wolf, 
Harrishurg, Dec. 2, 1835. 



66 ANDRE\7 JACKSON'S WARNING 



The best blood of the country has failed yet to quench 
the fire of rebellion which these wicked abolitionists 
kindled. Who loved the Union then — the Governor of 
Pennsylvania and his friends who were Democrats, or 
the abolitionists who now denounce them 1 This war 
would never have been but for these " fanatics," and is 
the offspring of their fanaticism. All those who would 
preserve the Union by abstaining from all interference 
with the slaves of the South — who wished to keep in- 
violate the compact made by the fathers of the republic — 
were denounced as pro-slavery and wicked hypocrites. 

In the same month, General Jackson, President of the 
United States, addressed the people as follows : " I 
must invite your attention to the painful excitement 
produced in the South by the attempts to circulate 
through the mails inflammatory appeals addressed to the 
passions of the slaves. There is doubtless no respectable 
portion of our own countrymen, whp can be so far 
misled as to feel any other sentiment than that of 
indignant regret at conduct so destructive of the harmony 
and peace of our country — so repugnant to the principles 
of our national compact, and to the dictates of humanity 
and religion. Our happiness and prosperity depend 
upon peace within our borders, and peace depends upon 
the maintenance, in good fldth, of those compromises of 
the Constitution upon which the Union is founded. 

" It is fortunate for the country that the good sense, 
the generous feeling, and the deep-rooted attachment of 
the people of the non-slaveholding States to the Union, 
and to their fellow-citizens of the same blood in the 
South, have given so strong and impressive a tone to the 
sentiments enter tallied against the proceedings of the 
misguided persons who have engaged in these unconsti- 



AGAINST ABOLITION" DOCUMENTS. 57 



tutional and wicked attempts, and especially against the 
emissaries from foreign parts (George Thompson and 
others) who have dared to interfere in this matter, as 
to authorize the hope that those attempts of these 
fanatics will no longer be persisted in. But if these 
expressions of the public will shall not be sufficient to 
effect so desirable a result, not a doubt can be enter- 
tained that the North, so far from countcnancins: the 
shghtest interference with the constitutional rights of 
the South, will be prompt to exercise its authority in 
suppressing, so far as in it lies, ivhatever is calculated to 
produce this evil" — Andrew Jackson, Dec. 9, 1835. 

There is the name of the great warrior and statesman 
set to a document condemning AVilliam Lloyd Garrison, 
George Thompson, and their great army enlisted under 
their banner, as fanatics — who were engaged in wicked 
and unconstitutional proceedings, destructive of the 
harmony and peace of our country, repugnant to the 
principles of our national compact, as well as to the 
dictates of humanity and religion ; and hoping that the 
North will suppress, by an exercise of its authority, 
whatever is calculated to destroy the peace, which 
" depends upon the maintenance, in good fliith, of those 
compromises of the Constitution on which the Union is 
founded." Had tlie advice of that old hero been taken 
thus early, these abolitionists would not now be deplor- 
ing that he is not alive to put down this rebellion which 
their fanaticism kindled.* All their publications would 
have been suppressed, as they now suppress the Demo- 
cratic papers, which tried for thirty years to save the 
Union from destruction by these very abolitionists. 

On the 9th of January, 1836, James Buchanan made 
the following remarks in the Senate of the United 



58 THE ABOLITTONISTS SCATTER 



States: "A number of fanatics, led on by foreign in- 
cendiaries, have been scattering ' firebrands, arrows, and 
death throughout the Southern States.' Self-preserva- 
tion is the first law of nature. The people of the South 
must counteract the eff'orts of the abolitionists. The 
slaves must be kept in closer bondage to prevent their 
rising. The property of the master in his slave existed 
in- full force before the Federal Constitution was adopted. 
These States, by the adoption of the Constitution, never 
yielded to the general government any right to interfere 
with their slaves. The Constitution has, in the clearest 
terms, recognized the right of property in the slaves. 
Do not the abolitionists perceive, that the spirit roused 
at the South must protract to an indefinite period the 
emancipation of the slave] The necessary efiect of 
their efforts is to render desperate those to whom the 
power of emancipation belongs." 

Twenty-five years passed away, and the South was in 
such a state of desperation that James Buchanan, though 
President of the United States, had not power to control 
it ; and the abolitionists called him a traitor because he 
could not quench those fierce flames these fanatics had 
kindled by their firebrands, scattered for so long a period 
throughout the Southern States. In June, 1833, the 
editor of the Richmond Whig said : 

" Garrison, himself, is not more a friend of emancipa- 
tion than we, but we happen to live in the South, and 
to know, beyond the possibility of being mistaken, that, 
if ever achieved, it must be done by the voluntary action 
of the slaveholder, and that every external attempt to 
accelerate it — no matter from what quarter — renders 
more desperate the now wellnigh desperate chance of 
success by colonization. This is as true as there is a 



FIREBRANDS, ARROWS, AND DEATH. 59 



heaven above, and it ought at once to seal the lips of 
the whole tribe of fanatics." . 

In April, 1836, Gerrit Smith said: "It is not to be 
disguised, sir, that war has broken out between the 
South and the North, not easily to be terminated. 
Political men, for their own purposes, are industriously 
striving to restore peace. The sword now drawn will 
not be sheathed till victory — entire victory — is ours or 
theirs. Whom shall we muster on our side in this 
great battle between liberty and slavery V 

This great infidel, who said that if he were elected 
President by the abolitionists, his first effort would be 
made for the overthrow of the Christian religion, was 
thus early enlisted under the banner of Garrison, and 
mustering men into the abolition crusade against the 
South. But there was one man who did not join them 
then, and of course would not fight for them now, were 
the old hero yet among the living. Hear his farewell 
warning to the people of the United States against this 
abolition army: 

" Fellow-citizens," says General Jackson, again, in 
1839: "Being about to retire finally from public life, 
if I use the occasion to offer you the counsels of age and 
experience, you will, I trust, receive them with the 
same indulgent kindness you have so often extended to 
me ; and will, at least, see in them an earnest desire to 
perpetuate in this favored land the blessings of liberty 
and equal law. We have now lived almost fifty years 
under the Constitution framed by the sages and patriots 
of the Revolution. It is no longer a doubtfid experi- 
ment. And at the end of nearly half a century we find 
that it has preserved unimpaired the liberties of the 
people, secured the rights of property, and that our 



60 JACKSON'S WARNING TO THE ABOLITIONISTS. 



country has improved, and is flourishing beyond any 
former example in the history of nations. (Although 
ruled for forty years by slaveholders, and the Constitu- 
tion a covenant with death, and an agreement with 
hell.) 

" It is no longer a question whether this great country 
can remain happily united, and flourish under our present 
form of government. Experience, the unerring test of 
all human undertakings, has shown the wisdom and 
foresight of those who formed it, and has proved that 
in the union of these States there is a sure foundation 
for the brightest hopes of freedom, and for the happiness 
of the people. At every hazard, and by every sacrifice, 
this Union must be preserved. The necessity of watch- 
ing with jealous anxiety for the preservation of the 
Union was earnestly pressed upon his fellow-citizens by 
the Father of his Country, in his farewell address, and 
he there told us there would always be reason to dis- 
trust the patriotism of those who, in any quarter, may 
endeavor to weaken its bonds. When we look upon 
the scenes that are passing around us, and dwell upon 
the pages of his parting address, his paternal counsels 
would seem to be not merely the off'spring of wisdom 
and foresight, but the voice of prophecy, foretelling 
events, and warning us of the evil to come. Forty 
years have passed since this imperishable document was 
given to his countrymen. The Federal Constitution 
was then regarded by him as an experiment, and he so 
speaks of it in his address; but an experiment upon 
the success of which the best hopes of his country 
depended. The trial has been made. It has succeeded 
beyond the proudest hopes of those who framed it. 
Every quarter of this wide nation has felt its blessings, 



ASKS THEM TO REMEMBER WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL. 61 



and shared in the prosperity produced by its adoption. 
But amid the general prosperity, the dangers of which 
he warned us are becoming every day more evident, 
and the signs of evil are sufficiently apparent to awaken 
the deepest anxiety in the bosom of the patriot. We 
behold systematic attempts to sow the seeds of discord 
between different parts of the United States, and to 
place party divisions directly upon geographical distinc- 
tions, to excite the South against the North, and the 
North against the South, and to force into the con- 
troversy the most delicate and exciting topics — topics 
whicli it is impossible that a large portion of the Union 
can ever speak of without strong emotion. Appeals, 
too, are constantly made to sectional interests, in order 
to influence the election of the Chief Magistrate, as if 
it were desired that he should favor a particular quarter 
of the country, instead of fulfilling his station with im- 
partial justice to all : and the possible dissolution of the 
Union has at length become an ordinary and familiar 
subject of discussion. Has the warning voice of Wash- 
ington been forgotten, or have designs already been 
formed to sever the Union "? 

Now, where do we find the motto, "The Union 
must be preserved," so often quoted now by abolitionists, 
except in the very warning given in his Farewell Ad- 
dress, against these very abolitionists, who were talking 
about the possible dissolution of this Union, but the 
fanatics enlisted under the banner of Wm. Lloyd Gar- 
rison 1 It has been said that General Jackson wrote a 
letter, in which he declared that the next pretext South 
Carolina would make for dissolving the Union would 
be the slavery question, and that letter was dated 1833. 
But here, four years later, he was warning the country 



62 JACKSOX TRIES TO SAVE THE UNION 



against disunionists North ; and he commenced the 
warning two years before — not against Southern trai- 
tors, but against Northern ones. To whom is he 
addressing himself, when he says — " What have you to 
gain by division and dissension I Dekide not yourself 
that a breach once made may be afterwards repaired. 
If the Union is once severed, the line of separation will 
grow wider and wider, and the controversies which are 
now debated and settled in the halls of legislation, will 
then be tried in fields of battle, and determined by the 
sword. It is impossible to look on the consequences 
that would inevitably follow the destruction of this 
government, and not feel indignant when we hear cold 
calculations about the value of the Union, and have so 
constantly before us a line of conduct so well calcidated 
to weaken its ties." 

Behold the indignation manifested here by that great 
statesman against the conduct of the abolitionists, who 
were thereby weakening the ties of the Union ! " But 
the Constitution cannot be maintained, nor the Union 
preserved in opposition to public feeling, by the mere 
exertion of the coercive power of the government. The 
foundations must be laid in the affections of the people, 
in the security it gives to life, liberty, character and 
property, in every quarter of the country ; and in 
the fraternal attachment which the citizens of the 
several States bear to one another, as members of one 
political family, mutually contributing to promote the 
happiness of each other. Hence, the citizens of every 
State should studiously avoid every thing calculated to 
wound the sensibilities, or offend the just pride of the 
people of other States ; and they should frown upon any 
proceedings within their borders likely to disturb the 



FROM DESTRUCTION BY ABOLITIONISTS. 63 



tranquillity of their political brethren in other portions 
of the Union. In a country so extensive as the United 
States, the internal regulations of the several States 
must frequently differ from each other, and this differ- 
ence is unavoidably increased by the varying principles 
upon wliich the American colonies were originally 
planted, principles which have taken deep root in theii 
social relations before the Revolution, and, therefore, of 
necessity influencing their policy since they became free 
and independent States. But each State has the un- 
questionable right to regulate its own internal concerns 
according to its own pleasurt^ and while it docs not 
interfere with the rights of the people of other States, 
or the rights of the Union, every State must be the sole 
judge of the measures proper to secure the safety of its 
citizens, and promote their happiness ; and all efforts on 
the part of the people of other States to cast odium 
upon their institutions, and all measures calculated to 
disturb their rights of property, or to put in jeopardy 
their peace and internal tranquillity, are in direct oppo- 
sition to the spirit in which the Union was formed, and 
must endanger its safety. Rest assured that the men 
found busy in this work of discord are not worthy of 
your confidence, and deserve your strongest reproba- 
tion." — Andrew Jackson. 

Who were tliose men declared by General Jackson 
deserving the strongest reprobation of the American 
people'? They were Wm. liloyd Garrison, Wendell 
Phillips, Theodore Parker, George P. Cheever, Gerrit 
Smith, and hosts of lesser workers of discord following 
after them. 

In these days it is considered a great crime to be 
disloyal to the government of the United States, and 



niS COUNSELS UNHEEDED. 



everybody is required to acquiesce in every measure 
Abraham lincoln considers necessary to save the Union. 
"Was not General Jackson's authority equal to that of 
Mr. Lincoln 1 Is he not considered as wise a statesman 
to-day, even wiser, and the absence of his counsels and 
wisdom in this great emergency universally deplored 1 
But how were his counsels treated, when standing up 
for the last time, in the exact place where Mr. Lincoln 
is now pretending to be engaged in saving the Union 
from destruction, he appealed to the citizens of America 
to frown upon any proceedings likely to weaken the 
ties of the Union, or disturb the rights of the property, 
or put in jeopardy the peace of the people in the South. 
The abolitionists all over the North replied, to his 
appeals and responded to his counsels in the following 
decided resolve : 

" That it is the duty of every person who makes any 
pretensions to republicanism, or the common feelings 
of humanity, to exercise all their influence in all their 
capacities, to effect the abolition of all the slave laws in 
our country, and the immediate and unconditional 
emancipation of all the slaves ;" and. this after General 
Jackson had told them that each State had a right to 
regulate its own internal concerns according to its own 
pleasure. He told them that the foundations of the 
Union must be preserved by the fraternal attachment 
which the citizens of the several States should bear to 
one another, as members of one political family, mutu- 
ally contributing to promote the happiness of each 
other. And they answered him by resolving, " That it 
is the duty of every citizen who has the right to vote, 
to exercise that right in favor of no candidate for the 
offices of President, Governor, Federal or State Legisla- 



DECLARATION OF JOHN ADAMS. 65 



ture or any other station that gives a political power 
over slavery, except he be opposed to that system in 
abstract feeling and outward action ;" and, again, that 
they would vote for no slaveholder for office, or for any 
person that would Vote for a slaveholder. That is the 
loyalty displayed towards the government of the United 
States when a Democratic President ruled over the 
people instead of an abolitionist. 

In the Life of John Adams, one of the founders of 
the government, it declares that "a settled plan to 
deprive the people of all the benefits and ends of the 
contract, to subvert the fundamentals of the Constitu- 
tion, to df^prive them of all share in making and exe- 
cuting the laws, will justify a revolution." 

The progress the abolitionists were making towards 
the dissolution of the Union in eight years can be 
estimated by tlie speech of Hon. Henry Clay, in the 
United States Senate, in 1839. He says: 

"The abolitionists are resolved to persevere in the 
pursuit of their object at all hazards ; their purpose is to 
manumit forthwith, and without compensation, .and 
without moral preparation three millions of negro slaves, 
under jurisdictions altogether separate from those under 
which tliey live. I have said that the abolition of 
slavery in the District of Columbia and the exclusion 
of new States, were only means towards the attainment 
of their end. Unfortunately, they are not the only 
means. Another and a much more lamentable one is, 
that of arraying one portion against another portion of 
the Union. With that view, in all their leading prints 
the alleged horrors of slavery are depicted in the most 
glowing and exaggerated colors, to excite the imagina- 
tions and stimulate the rage of the people in the free 
6 



66 HENRY CLAY ALARMED FOR THE UNION. 



States against the people in the slave States. The 
slaveholder is held up and represented as the most atro- 
cious of human beings. Advertisements of slaves to be 
sold are carefully collected and blazoned forth, to infuse 
a spirit of detestation and hatred against one entire 
section of the Union. 

" I would seriously invite every considerate man in 
the country solemnly to pause and reflect, not merely 
on our existing posture, but upon that dreadful precipice 
down which they would hurry us. To the agency of 
their powers of persuasion they now propose to substi- 
tute the powers of the ballot-box, and the inevitable 
tendency of their proceedings is, if these should be found 
insufficient, to invoke, finally, the more potent powers 
of the bayonet. 

" The first impediment in the way of the abolitionists 
of the emancipation of the slaves, is the utter and 
absolute want of all power in the General Government 
to effect their purpose. The Constitution of the United 
States creates a limited government, comprising com- 
paratively few powers, and leaving the residuary mass 
of political power in the possession of the several States. 
It is well known that the subject of slavery interposed 
one of the greatest difficulties in the formation of the 
Constitution. It was happily compromised and adjusted 
in a spirit of harmony and patriotism. According to 
that compromise, no power whatever was granted to the 
General Government in respect to domestic slavery but 
that which relates to taxation and representation, and 
the power to restore fugitive slaves to their owners. 
All other power in regard to the institution of slavery 
was retained exclusively by the States, to be exercised 
by them according to their own peculiar interest. The 



HE SAYS THE ABOLITIONISTS WILL DESTROY IT. 67 



Constitution of the United States never could have been 
formed upon the principle of investing the General 
Government with authority to abolish the institution at 
its pleasure. It never can be continued for a single 
day if the exercise of such a power be assumed or 
usurped," 

Henry Clay was considered by all the people of these 
United States, and, during the latter part of his life, by 
the Ilepublicans in particular, to be the wisest statesman 
in America. There is his authority, then, to prove that 
Abraham Lincoln has destroyed the Constitution of our 
country. He has assumed the power and usurped au- 
thority to abolish slavery in all the States he pleases, and 
if the people continue him as President four years 
longer, there is not a doubt that he will usurp the au- 
thority and assume the power to trample all law under 
his feet. 

Henry Clay asks : " Why are the slave States wan- 
tonly and cruelly assailed ] Why do the abolition presses 
teem with publications tending to excite hatred and ani- 
mosity on the part of the inhabitants of the free States 
aerainst those of the slave States ] I know that there is 
a visionary dogma which holds that negro slaves cannot 
be the subjects of property. Under all the forms of 
government which have existed upon this continent for 
two hundred years they have been solemnly recognized 
as property. They were treated as property in the 
very British example which is appealed to as worthy 
of imitation. Although the West India planters had 
no voice in Parliament, an irresistible sense of justice 
extorted from that legislature the grant of twenty mil- 
lions of pounds sterling to the colonists for their loss of 
property. • - ^^ 



68 HENRY clay's PICTURE OF THE 



" Sir, I am not in the habit of speaking lightly of the 
possibility of dissolving this happy Union ; but abolition 
should no longer be regarded as an imaginary danger. 
The abolitionists, let me suppose, succeed in their pres- 
ent aim of uniting the people of the free States as one 
man against the people of the slave States. Union on one 
side will beget union on the other ; and this process of 
reciprocal consolidation will be attended with all the 
implacable animosities which ever degraded or deformed 
human nature. The collision of opinion will be quickly 
followed by the clash of arms. I will not attempt to 
describe scenes which now happily lie concealed from 
our view. Abolitionists themselves would shrink back 
in dismay and horror at the contemplation of desolated 
fields, conflagrated cities, murdered inhabitants, and the 
overthrow of the fairest fabric of human government 
that ever rose to animate the hopes of civilized man. 
Nor should these abolitionists flatter themselves that, if 
they can succeed in their object of uniting the people 
of the North against the people of the South, they will 
enter the contest with a numerical superiority that must 
insure victory. All history and experience prove the 
hazard and uncertainty of war. And we are admon- 
ished by holy writ that ' the race is not to the swift, nor 
the battle to the strong." But if they were to conquer, 
whom would they conquer 1 A foreign foe"? No, sir. 
It would be a conquest without laurels, without glory ; 
a suicidal conquest ; a conquest of brothers over broth- 
ers, achieved by one over another portion of the descend- 
ants of common ancestors, who, nobly pledging their 
lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honors, had fought 
and bled, side by side, in many a hard battle on land and 
ocean, and established our independence. 



HORRORS OF CIVIL WAR. 



" Mr. President, the Searcher of all hearts knows that 
every pulsation of my heart beats high and strong in the 
cause of civil liberty. Wherever it is safe and practi- 
cable, I desire to see every portion of the human family 
in the enjoyment of it. But I prefer the liberty of my 
own race to that of any other race. The liberty of the 
descendants of Africa in the United States is incom- 
patible with the liberty and safety of the European 
descendants. We did not originate, nor are we respon- 
sible for its necessity. Their liberty, if it were possible, 
could only be established by violating the incontestible 
powers of the States, and subverting the Union; and 
beneath the ruins of the Union would be buried, sooner 
or later, the liberty of both races." 

Now, this accomplished scholar, this learned lawyer, 
this profound statesman, has told the people fairly what 
would be the result of forcible emancipation of the 
slaves in the South. Abraham Lincoln can only estab- 
lish their freedom by " violating the incontestible powers 
of the States, and subverting the Union ; and beneath 
the ruins of the Union" he is to reign supreme over 
both black and white — north and south, east and west. 
To avoid this dire result, :Mr. Clay appealed to the 
abolitionists in this touching strain: "I beseech the 
abolitionists themselves to pause in their mad and fatal 
course. Let them select some object of humanity that 
does not threaten to deluge our country in blood. I call 
upon that small portion of the clergy which has lent 
itself to these wild and ruinous schemes, not to forget 
the holy nature of the divine mission of the Founder 
of our religion, and to profit by his peaceful examples. 
I entreat that portion of my countrywomen, who have 
siven their countenance to abolition, to reflect that the 



70 HORACE GREELEY SAYS ABOLITIONISTS AR3 



ink which they shed in subscribing with their fair hands 
abolition petitions may prove but the prehide to the 
shedding of the blood of their brethren. I adjure all 
the inliabitants of the free States to rebuke and discoun- 
tenance measures which must inevitably lead to the most 
calamitous consequences. And let us all, as country- 
men, as friends, and as brothers, cherish in unflxding 
memory the motto which bore our ancestors trium- 
phantly through all the trials of the Revolution, and, if 
adhered to, it will conduct their posterity through all 
that may, in the dispensation of Providence, be reserved 
for them." 

Five years passed away, and the abolitionists had not 
paused in their course to overthrow the government and 
dissolve the Union. Horace Greeley could denounce 
their course, and say " that the tendencies of abolition 
are toward a sweeping, radical revolution both in Church 
and State. The abolition policy is the exact antipodes 
of that uniformly pursued by Clarkson and Wilberforce 
and their fellow philanthropists in Great Britain. We 
have already noticed the formation of a new society in 
the town of Skaneatelas. This society is an offshoot of 
the ultra anti-slavery spirit of the time ; and embodies 
a protest against all civil government — all authority in 
Church and State." Their sentiments are thus set forth 
in their publications : 

" Rejecting the hoary doctrine of man's natural de- 
pravity, we assert that human nature is pure, noble, 
divine ; that human rights are equal the world over ; 
that all sects and parties, civil and ecclesiastical, priests 
and politicians, churches and governments, are mon- 
strosities of ignorance and bigotry." 
^ Mr. Greeley says : " That the No-Church movement 



FOR REVOLUTIOX IN CHURCH AND STATE. 71 



had its origin in abolition, we perceive as clearly as we 
do the causes of any great moral and social impulse. 
The career of the Vermont Telegraph, of Wm. Lloyd 
Garrison and liis liberator, the Herald of Freedom, the 
course of Gerrit Smith — all prove it." 

Some abolitionists say, " No union with slaveholders ;" 
Gerrit Smith says, " Be ours the better motto. No slave- 
holder for civil office, and no person who thinks a slave- 
holder fit for one." Mr. Greeley says, "No person who 
thinks a slaveholder ht for office can be voted for by a 
liberty man. It is not enough that to cast a vote for 
Washington, Patrick Henry, Jefferson, or John Marshall, 
is to brand a man a traitor to freedom ; but to vote for 
any man wlio would vote for any of these is to be a traitor. 
The blacks must surely be overwhelmed with gratitude 
towards such champions of their rights." 

Again he says : " The abolitionists say that Henry 
Clay is unfit to be the President because he is a slave- 
holder. Is this the way to preserve the Union ? If a 
noble and lofty statesman can be hunted down on such 
grounds as these, is not the Union, in essence, dissolved 1 
How shall we ask the South to support a Northern man 
for President, or submit to the rule of one, if the bare 
fact that a candidate is a Southern man is to exclude 
him from the honors of the republic T' 

Aeain : " In their State Conventions, the abohtionists 
soberly tell us that one clause in the Constitution is null 
and void (the rendition of a fugitive slave), because it 
seems in their view to recognize slavery, and yet would 
have us believe that an abolition President of their 
making would coolly stand up and swear, with solemn 
oath, that he believed that Constitution, and would 
maintain it. Men begin to inquire whether they would 



72 HE SATS, ABOLITIONISTS WOULD COMMIT PERJURY. 



dare to put a candidate of the abolition party into the 
presidential chair. Would it not be an act so rash in 
its character and fearful in its results that we should 
hesitate to assume the responsibility ? Shall my assump- 
tion that the government is morally wrong in one of its 
req.uisitions justify me in swearing to obey that govern- 
ment in order to obtain a coveted office, and then pro- 
ceeding to disobey it 1 How can I take an oath to obey 
and preserve inviolate the Constitution of the United 
States, and yet purpose to disobey and violate one of the 
most important stipulations of that instrument, without 
which the Constitution would probably never have been 
framed and never adopted ] What right have I to pick 
and choose which of its provisions I will obey and which 
disobey ] How could James G. Birney take as President 
the oath to preserve the Constitution, all the while 
intending not to support, but to subvert certain parts 
of if? Would not this be perjury"? And would Mr. 
Birney be any more culpable in taking the oath to sup- 
port the Constitution, meaning all the while to violate 
a part of it, than would those who, by their votes, 
solemnly instructed and directed him to do so? In 
our judgment, all who vote to make Mr. Birney an 
abolition President vote to instruct him to commit 
peijury, and are themselves guilty (unwittingly) of 
subornation of perjury, just as much as if their purpose 
was consummated." 

Now read the following, and see who voted to make 
Abraham Lincoln commit perjury. The Tribune, Dec. 
3d, 1863, has the following : 

" Thirty years ago to-day, a few men met in Phila- 
delphia to form the American Anti-slavery Society. 
Eleven years after the formation of the society, kindred 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN ELECTED BY ABOLITIONISTS. 73 



societies had been organized in every considerable town 
and village in the free States, whose members numbered 
scores of thousands. These associations had employed 
hundreds of agents, who had traversed the country, 
delivering addresses in all the principal centres of popu- 
lation. They had established newspapers in all the 
Northern States, and had circulated pamphlets and tracts 
by the million. Their principles had made a strong 
lodgment in the leading religions denominations of the 
country. The abolitionists aimed their blows right at 
the core of slavery, denouncing it as a sin, whose only 
appropriate remedy was immediate and unconditional 
emancipation, without expatriation. It requires no 
spirit of divination to perceive that the organization of 
the Anti-slavery Society in 1833, and the election of a 
Republican President in 1861, bear to each other the 
relation of remote cause and ultimate effect. The anti- 
slavery sentiment of the country consolidated its ranks, 
and Abraham Lincoln took the Presidential chair. 
Their great work hastens to completion." 

Here we have the alarming fact revealed that the 
President of the United States, upon the very first of his 
election, was in the hands of an unprincipled set of men, 
who would not hesitate to direct him to violate his oath 
of office and commit peijury whenever their purposes 
required it. We have the fact revealed as clear as the 
light of day, that he is in the hands of men who 
inscribed upon their banners at that early day, " The 
Constitution of the United States is a covenant with 
death and an agreement with hell," that the govern- 
ment, the Union and the Constitution must all be 
overthrown in order to free the slaves. We have the 
solemn fact made known that the very men whom 



74 THE ABOLITIONISTS REJOICE 



General Jackson told us were not worthy of our confi- 
dence, and deserved our strongest reprobation for their 
wicked and unconstitutional attempts to produce insur- 
rections in the South, and their endeavors to destroy 
the Union, are placed where they can carry out all their 
wicked schemes, under the sanction of laws of their own 
making. We have heard them shouting, " The Lord 
reigneth, let the earth rejoice ! The covenant with 
death is annulled, the agreement with hell is broken. 
Let us not grieve over the Union of 1789." "Were 
Henry Clay alive he could have heard William Lloyd 
Garrison say, " The slave States, with the exception of 
three or four, have all left the Union. I am glad of it. 
I did not believe in the old Union." 

The government is in the hands of the enemies of all 
our patriot fathers, and of the Father of his Country in 
particular, whose counsels they have always despised. 
The following report is given of a meeting in Phila- 
delphia in 1859: 

" The meeting of the Anti-slavery Society was well 
attended, and many of the life-long defenders of the 
cause were present — William Lloyd Garrison among 
others. The report gave a full and lucid history of 
abolitionism in Pennsylvania from its origin. In 1789, 
the anti-slavery spirit was very animated. All classes 
were imbued with it, even to Tom Paine ; yet from that 
period it became less energetic. Its decline is traced 
through many years of obscuration, and its revival is 
attributed to the establishment of the Boston Liberator, 
in 1831, and looks forward with prophetic confidence to 
the future." 

Here is the link in the chain that reaches back to 
the days of Washington ; and we have another startling 



THAT THE UNION IS DISSOLVED. 75 



fact brought to light, that tyrants and oppressors control 
the nation; for if the taking of one slave from Mr. 
Dalby was an act of tyranny and oppression, what is it 
to deprive the Southern people of four millions, less or 
more, without compensation 1 And it is against these 
tyrants and oppressors that the Southern people are 
fighting. They loved the Union up to the day of 
Abraham Lincoln's election, but they knew their fate, 
for it had been told them by the abohtionists themselves 
for thirty years. They asked security against their 
designs, by the Northern people. They failed to receive 
it, and resolved to protect themselves. 

In the year 1835 Mr. Benton exposed the designs of 
tlie abolitionists in a speech made in the United States 
Senate, as follows : 

" The abolitionists I cannot regard as any thing else 
but incendiaries and agitators, with diabolical objects in 
view, to be accomplished by wicked and deplorable 
means ; for every attempt to work upon the passions of 
the slaves, and to excite them to murd(;r their owners, 
was a wicked and diabolical attempt, and the work of a 
midnight incendiary. Pictures of slave degradation and 
misery, and of white man's luxury and cruelty, were 
attempts of this kind, for they were appeals to the 
vengeance of the slaves, and not to the intelligence 
and reason of those who legislated for them. Mr. Ben- 
ton said he had many pictures of this kind, as well 
as many diabolical publications, sent to him on this 
subject during the last summer ; the whole of which he 
had cast into the fire. And within a fev/ days past, 
while abolition petitions were pouring iflto the Capitol, 
ho had received one of the pictures, the design of which 
could be nothing but mischief of the blackest dye. The 



76 THE MASSACRE OF ST. DOMINGO. 



print was evidently from the abolition mint ; and for 
what purpose could such a picture be intended, unless 
to inflame the passions of the slaves % And why engrave 
it, except to multiply copies for extensive circulation 1 
But it was not pictures alone that operated upon the 
passions of the slaves, but speeches, publications, and 
the whole machinery of abolition societies, inspiring 
vague hopes, and stimulating insurrections. It was 
thus that the massacre of San Domingo was made. 
The society in Paris — Les Amis des Noirs — (friends 
of the blacks), with its affiliated societies throughout 
France, made that massacre. And who composed that 
society 1 In the beginning it comprised the extremes 
of virtue and vice — it contained the best and the basest 
of mankind: Lafayette and the Abbe Gregoire, those 
purest of philanthropists, and Marat and Anacharsis 
Cloots, those imps of hell in human shape. In the 
end, the good men, disgusted with their associates, re- 
tired from the scene, and the wicked ruled at pleasure. 
Declamations against slavery, pictures, publications in 
gazettes, petitions to the constituent assembly, were 
the mode of proceeding. The effect upon the French 
islands is known to the world." 

An aboHtion writer in 1862, says: "The negroes did 
not revolt, did not rise in insurrection, did not murder, 
rob, and expel the whites from the Island of St. 
Domingo until 1801, seven years after their emanci- 
pation, when Bonaparte decreed their re-enslavement ; 
and even then it was not till after the French had been 
guilty of the most horrible outrages against the negroes, 
that they retaliated in kind. Such is the true history 
of St. Domingo." 

Now the truth is, that the abolitionists and repubM- 



ITS ABOLITION APOLOGISTS. 77 



cans who are now all as one, should have destroyed the 
records of this nation, before they undertook to destroy 
the government made by Washington, and the rest of 
our illustrious forefathers — for while the Father of his 
Country was still its Chief Executive, and sitting in the 
same chair of state now occupied by Abraham Lincoln, 
there then occurred that darkest of all dark tragedies, 
known in history as the Massacre of St. Domingo. 
Even Horace Greeley attempts to conceal its horrors, and 
says : " Some nervous folks have been very much fright- 
ened by the raising of negro troops, and have sobbed 
St. Domingo most piteously, under the impression that 
a great many people were killed on that island, although 
the mourners usually show a miraculous ignorance as to 
who were killed, why they were killed, and who killed 
them." 

Well, Mr. Greeley, the mourners over that awful 
catastrophe in the dark days of its occurrence were 
General George Washington, the Father of this once 
happy country, and his bosom friend, who loved him so 
well ^vhen living that he wrote his memoirs after his 
death, in which he says that " he was guided by an 
unvar)ing sense of moral right, and by a purity of 
virtue, which was not only untainted, but unsuspected." 
In his Life of Washington, Chief Justice Marshall relates 
the causes of the massacre of St. Domingo ; he tells us 
•' who were killed, why they were killed, and who killed 
them," And first he answers why they were killed; 
and he says that these massacres were brought about by 
the teachings of just such abolitionists as these in 
America. 

He says of the insurrection of the blacks in St. 
Domingo : " Early and bitter fruit of that malignant 



78 WASHINGTON SE^JDS AID TO THE 



philosophy which, disregarding the actual state of the 
world, and estimating at nothing the miseries of a vast 
portion of the human race, can coolly and deliberately 
pursue, through oceans of blood, abstract systems, for 
the attainment of some fancied good, were gathered in 
the French AVest Indies. Instead of proceeding in the 
correction of any abuses which might exist by those 
slow and cautious steps which gradually introduce 
reform without ruin, the revolutionists of France formed 
the mad and wicked project of spreading their doctrines 
of equality among persons between whom distinctions 
and prejudices exist to be subdued only by the grave. 
The rage excited by the pursuit of this visionary and 
baneful theory burst forth on the 31st day of August, 
1T91, with a fury alike destructive and general, 

" In one night, a preconcerted insurrection of the 
blacks took place throughout the colony, and the white 
inhabitants of the country, sleeping in their beds, were 
involved in one indiscriminate massacre, from which 
neither age nor sex could afford an exception. Only a 
few females, reserved for a fate more cruel than death, 
were spared, and not many were fortunate enough to 
escape into tlie fortified cities. The negroes then assem- 
bled in vast numbers, and a bloody war commenced be- 
tween them and the whites. The whole French part of 
the island was in imminent danger of being totally lost 
to the mother country. The minister of his Most Chris- 
tian Majesty applied to the President of the United 
States, General Washington, for a sum of money which 
would enable him to preserve this valuable colony, to be 
deducted out of the debt due to his sovereign, and the 
request was granted. 



WHITE PEOPLE OF ST. DOMINGO. 79 



General Washington to M. de Ternant, minister from 
France : 

"Mount Vernon, September, 1791. 

" Sir : — I have not delayed a moment since tlie receipt 
of your ietter, in dispatching orders to the Secretary of 
the Treasury to furnish the money, and to the Secretary 
of War to deliver the arms and ammunition, which you 
have applied to me for ; and am happy in the oppor- 
tunity of testifying how well disposed the United States 
are to render every aid in their power to our friends and 
allies, the French, to quell the alarming insurrection of 
the negroes in Hispaniola, and of the ready disposition 
of the executive authority to effect it. 

" George Washington." 

Now behold the awful contrast : Washington arming 
the whites against the blacks, to quell a servile insurrec- 
tion ; Abraliam Lincoln arming the blacks against the 
whites, and trying to produce just such a scene of horror 
in the United States as occurred in St. Domingo. Wash- 
ington was trying to save the white people from the 
baleful effects of the malignant philosophy taught by 
the French infidels, Abraham Lincoln carries out the 
wicked projects of the same class of infidels in America, 
wliom Thomas Benton designated as incendiaries with 
diabolical objects in view, who had formed an abolition 
society in America, precisely like that in France to 
which belonged those imps of hell in human sliape, 
Marat and Cloots ; and history proves the principles of 
infidels in France identical with the abolition reformers 
in America. Anacharsis Cloots declared himself the 
" personal enemy of Jesus Christ," the spokesman of the 
human race, which he was determined to unite in one 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE 



common brotherhood; and Theodore Parker says: "I 
do not take Jesus Christ for my master, I do not take 
the Bible for my master, I do not believe in the miracu- 
lous inspiration of the Old or New Testament." 

The infidels of France celebrated the festival of Rea- 
son in the ancient cathedral of Notre Dame, instead of 
Divine service. They dethroned the Almighty, and set 
up for worship the Goddess of Reason. Gerrit Smith 
says : " May I make my Bible my standard l Certainly 
not until my reason has passed upon it. The Bible is 
the servant, and not the master of human reason. To 
honor my reason is at all times my religious duty." 
" The South is full of the common religion, and hence 
the impossibility of peacefully dislodging her slavery. 
It is true that the religion of France was not essentially 
different from that of our own country ; but so slender 
was its hold on the public mind, that it could not 
prevent the reason of France from abolishing slavery. 
The abolition of French slavery is largely owing to 
French infidelity. Had that nation been more religious 
and less rational, her slavery would have continued to 
this day." 

This was" said by Gerrit Smith several years ago, and 
is an acknowledgment that the infidels of America were 
seeking the " dislodgment of slavery" in our country 
through the same means that were used by those in 
France. And if there was nothing else wanting to show 
that this war is a war of infidelity, and not a Christian 
war, these facts prove it. The beloved friend of Wash- 
ington says : " The revolutionists of France formed the 
mad and wicked project of spreading their doctrines of 
equality among persons between whom distinctions and 
prejudices existed, to be subdued only by the grave." 



EQUALITY OF THE RACES WICKED. 81 



As Judge Marshall was the intimate companion of Wash- 
ington, he must have known his opinions ; and these 
two officers, who fought for the independence of this 
nation, and understood the meaning of that phrase in 
the Declaration, "All men are created equal," here de- 
clare the inequality of the white and black race ; de- 
clare that there existed between them distinctions and 
prejudices to be subdued only by the grave ; that to 
spread the doctrines of equality among them was mad 
and wicked ; that the philosophy which teaches such 
equality is a malignant philosophy ; and that the theory 
is visionary and baneful. 

And these are the very doctrines, this the very phi- 
losophy, which has been taught by the abolitionists of 
America for the last thirty years ; whicli has been in- 
fused through all the American churches, until the doc- 
trine that " all men are created equal" has been received 
as a religious dogma, and its belief made the test of 
Christian fellowship. And it has been taught, further- 
more, that this bloody war, brought upon this nation by 
the promulgation of the false and malignant doctrines 
of the abolitionists, is a holy war, brought upon us by 
the Almighty, for the very purpose of carrying out the 
})lans of men who scorn his revealed Word and trample 
tlic authority of Jesus Christ under their feet. We are 
told that it is to obey the commands of the Almighty 
that the nc^groes are armed against their masters, when 
tlie Bible says to "Let as many servants as are under 
the yoke (of slavery) count their masters worthy of all 
honor, that the name of God and his doctrine be not 
blasphemed." The abolitionists have taught the slaves 
that they have a natural right to kill their masters and 
all who stand between them and freedom, thus instigat- 
6 



82 SLAVES TAUGHT TO MURDER THEIR MASTERS. 



ing the negroes for thirty years to rise against the white 
people of the South. How could the people of the 
South love the people of the North, who taught their 
negroes that it was perfectly right to murder them at 
any time and then rob them of such property as they 
could bring away 1 Washington said it was an act of 
oppression for a man to entice a slave from his master. 
What name, then, can be given to the crime of teaching 
the slaves, not only to leave their masters, but to take 
their lives also, if need be, to gain their freedom ] Had 
the negroes followed the advice of the people of the 
North, the South would long ere this have been deluged 
in t]ie blood of men, women, and children, and the lands 
been left to waste. It is not a new idea, advanced since 
this war begun, to get the negroes armed to kill the 
inhabitants of the South. John Brown attempted the 
same thing three years before Mr. Lincoln commenced 
it, and all efforts have been made by the abolitionists 
for that purpose it was possible to be made after the 
South had the precaution to drive them from their soil 
whenever they made their appearance. 

Jefferson penned the declaration that "We hold 
these trutlis to be self-evident that all men are created 
(>qual, that they are endowed by their Creator with 
certain unalienable rights — among which are life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness." The abolitionists declare 
that these assertions of our forefathers to their rights of 
liberty of which Great Britain was depriving them, 
apply equally to the negro race now in slavery, and that 
they have a natural right to rebel against the white 
people, and raise a servile war, involving the slaughter 
of the white race, and that sucli a war, on their part, 
would be both righteous and just. And Jefferson's 



JEFFERSON AIDED THE WHITES IN ST. DOMINGO. 83 



words, that the Almighty has no attributes which could 
take part with the oppressor in such a war, are often 
quoted to prove he believed the negro slaves would be 
justified in rising against their masters. The insurrec- 
tion in St. Domingo was a servile war — a war of races. 
Judge Marshall says the negroes assembled in vast 
numbers, and a bloody war commenced between them 
and the whites. Now what does Thomas Jeiferson do 
in such a war I Which side does he take, that of the 
negroes or that of the white people 1 He says, " When 
the insurrection of the negroes in St. Domingo assumed 
a very threatening appearance, the Assembly sent a 
deputy here to ask assistance of military stores and 
provisions. lie addressed himself to M. de Ternant, 
who (the President being in Virginia, as I was also) 
applied to the Secretaries of Treasury and War. They 
furnished one thousand stands of arms, and other mili- 
tary stores, and placed forty thousand dollars in the 
treasury subject to the order of the French Minister. 
Before the vessel arrived in St. Domingo, the Assembly, 
further urged by the appearance of danger, sent two 
deputies more with larger demands, viz., eight thousand 
ba}onets and fusils, two thousand musquators, three 
thousand pistols, three thousand sabres, twenty-four 
thousand barrels of flour, four hundred livres worth of 
Indian meal, rice, peas, etc., for the starving inhabitants, 
and a large quantity of plank to repair the buildings 
destroyed. They applied to M. de Ternant, and then, 
with his consent, to me, he and I having previously had 
a conversation on the subject. Congress resolved that 
a regular account of the money expended by the govern- 
ment be kept, and the President be requested to obtain 



84 JEFFERSON DESCRIBES THE AWFUL TRAGEDY. 



a credit therefor, in the accounts between the French 
republic and the United States." 

Again he says, " In the first moment of the insurrec- 
tion, which threatened the colony of St. Domingo, we 
stepped forward to their relief, with arms and money, 
taking freely upon ourselves the risk of an unauthorized 
aid when delay would have been denial ; we received, 
according to our best abilities, the wretched fugitives 
from the catastrophe, who, escaping from the swords 
and flames of civil war, threw themselves on us, naked 
and houseless, without food or friends, money or other 
means — their faculties lost and absorbed in the depth of 
their distresses." 

Behold the picture painted by the immortal Jefferson ! 
Pity touched his heart, sympathy filled his soul for the 
distresses of those homeless, naked, famishing, and^ 
friendless people of his own race, escaping from that 
awful catastrophe ! He received them according to his 
best abilities, and sent arms to kill the savage negroes 
who had slaughtered their friends in cold blood. But 
the abolitionists of America take the part of the negroes 
in that bloody tragedy, where two thousand white 
people were massacred without a chance for resistance. 
Mr. Smith, a member of Congress at the time of the 
appropriation for aid, said, " Such a scene of distress had 
never before been seen in America. Three thousand 
fugitives had been at once landed on our shores, without 
the least previous expectation of their arrival. Fifteen 
hundred of these people are quite helpless. All were 
women and children, except three old men." 
' "And these calamities were brought upon these people," 
says Mr. Marshall, " by the malignant philosophy of the 
French revolutionists, who taught the equality of the 



THE ABOLITIONISTS HINDER COLONIZATION. 85 



white and the black race." Such are the calamities, 
such the scenes, such the distresses which the aboli- 
tionists of America had in store for the people of the 
South. Such is the tragedy they have endeavored for 
thirty years to re-enact, among the people who helped 
to compose this happy Union, who helped to frame the 
best government on earth, who were once called our 
sisters and brothers, whom Washington entreated us to 
cease from reproaching on account of their institutions 
which were fastened upon them by the mother country 
in the infancy of their colonies, and for which there was 
but one remedy, and that the expatriation of the negro 
race. Washington prayed that the people of America 
would consider themselves as one family, and live in 
peace and harmony together, and they would have con- 
tinued so to live had not the aboHtionists been deter- 
mined to introduce the servants of Washington and our 
forcfiithers into this great family as their equals and 
their brothers, thus thwarting the plan of colonization 
begun by the South, to free their slaves and send them 
to Africa as fast as they could obtain the means for that 
purpose. Respecting the equality of mankind, Butler's 
Analogy of Religion has the following : 

" It is perfectly idle to object to the fact, that a plan 
or decree is contemplated in revelation, and that God 
should confer benefits on some individuals which are 
withheld from others. Did any man in his senses ever 
dream that the race, in all respects, are on an equality ? 
Has there ever been a time when one man was just as 
rich as another, or as much honored 1 To talk of the 
perfect equality of men is one of the most unmeaning 
of all affirmations respecting the world. God has made 
differences, is still making them, and will continue to do 



86 DR. BARNES DISCARDS THE IDEA OF EQUALITY. 



SO. The framework of society is organized on such a 
principle, that men cannot be equal. Even if the 
scheme of modern infidelity should be successful, if all 
society should be broken up, what principle of per- 
petuity could be devised 1 Man might better attempt 
to make all trees alike, and all hills plains, than to at- 
tempt to level society and bring the race into entire 
equality. To the end of time it will be true that some 
are poor and some are rich; that some will be endowed 
with gigantic intellects, and enriched with ancient and 
modern learning, while others will pine in want, or walk 
the humble paths of obscurity. If God can confer one 
blessing on one individual, which he withholds ftom 
another, we ask why he may not be a sovereign also in 
the dispensation of other favors'? Men will go on to 
make experiments in philosophy till scheme after scheme 
shall be abandoned ; they will frame schemes, until they 
arrive at the scheme of the New Testament ; they will 
devise modes of alleviating misery, until they fall on the 
very plan suggested two thousand years before them ; 
and they will form and abandon codes of morals, until 
they shall come at last to the moral maxims of the New 
Testament, and the world shall arrive at the conclusion 
that the highest wisdom is to sit down hke children at 
the feet of the Son of God, " convinced that he is the 
wisest man, as well as the profoundest philosopher, who 
yields himself up in meekness and simplicity of spirit 
to the teachings of the Saviour." 

Here, Dr. Barnes, in his introduction to the work of 
Bishop Butler, speaks of the doctrine of human equality 
as that of the modern infidels ; and all their schemes for 
alleviatins: the miseries of the human race wdll have to 
be " abandoned until the world shall arrive at the con- 



DR. WAYLAND's system OF MORALITY. 87 



elusion that the highest wisdom is to adopt the scheme 
of the New Testament." 

Dr. Wayland, in his Elements of Moral Science, says : 
"If the New Testament had proclaimed the unlaw- 
fulness of slavery, and taught slaves to resist the op- 
pression of their masters, it would instantly have arrayed 
the two parties in deadly hostility throughout the civil- 
ized world ; its announcement would have been the 
signal for servile war ; and the very name of the Chris- 
tian religion would have been forgotten amidst the agi- 
tations of luiiversal bloodshed." 

Here we have the fact acknowledged, that Christ and 
his Apostles did not proclaim the unlawfulness- of slavery, 
and teach slaves to resist the oppression of their masters. 
Therefore, the abolitionists have not followed the ex- 
ample of the Son of God, and cannot expect their con- 
duct to be approved of him. It is a fact, also, that can 
be clearly proved, that there could have been a com- 
promise of all our national troubles, even after the se- 
cession of a few of the Southern States, had not these 
abolitionists prevented it ; and that they desired a civil 
war in order to " dislodge" slavery. After the war had 
been determined on, but before any great battle had oc- 
curred, Wm. I.loyd Garrison, and the other abohtionists, 
said : " If God shall choose to wash slavery out by a river 
of human blood, we shall exclaim, as did the Psalmist 
of old, ' Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good; 
for his mercy endureth forever ! To Him that over- 
threw Pharaoh and his hosts in the Red Sea; for his 
mercy endureth forever.' " 

Now, the washing out of slavery by human blood is not 
the way that Christ and his Apostles planned to wash it 
out ; and as Christ is God, it may reasonably be inferreil 



DR. WAYLAND SATS WE ARE NOT TO OBEY 



that the scheme of the abolitionists will entirely fliil ; and 
although they have succeeded in shedding rivers of human 
blood, slavery will not thereby be washed away. If Dr. 
Wayland's system of morality and ethics can be relied on, 
this government has committed a far greater crime in 
the sight of God by thus shedding their brother's blood 
than the crime of slaveholding. He says: "The indi- 
vidual has no right to authorize society to do any thing 
contrary to the law of God ; that is, men connected in 
societies are under the same moral law as individuals. 
What is forbidden to the one is forbidden also to the 
other. Hence it would seem that all wars are contrary 
to the revealed will of God, and that society has no 
right to commit to government the power to declare 
war. To all arguments in favor of war, it would be a 
sufficient answer : that God has forbidden it ; and no 
consequences can possibly be conceived to arise from 
keeping his law, so terrible as those which must arise 
from violating it. War is granted to be a most calam- 
itous remedy for evils, and the most awful scourge that 
can be inflicted on the human race. It will be granted, 
then, that the resort to it, if not necessary, must be in- 
tensely wicked." And of civil war, he says : 

" Civil war is, of all evils which men inflict on them- 
selves, the most horrible. It dissolves not only social, 
but domestic ties ; overturns all the security of prop- 
erty ; throws back for ages all social improvement, and 
accustoms men to view without disgust, and even plea- 
sure, all" that is atrocious and revolting. Napoleon, ac- 
customed as he was to bloodshed, turned away with 
horror from the contemplation of civil war. This, then, 
cannot be considered the way designed by our Creator 
for rectifying social abuses." 



THE COMMANDS OF GOD TO MOSES, ETC. 89 



Now, to that class of the people of the Northern States 
who are not mfidels, but believe in the Christian reli- 
gion, Ur. Wayland teaches the following moral precepts : 

" When a revelation is made to us by language, it is 
taken for granted, that whatever is our duty will be sig- 
nified to us by a command ; and, hence, what is not 
commanded, is not to be considered by us as obliga- 
tory. The ground of moral obligation, as derived from 
revelation, must, therefore, be a command of God. Now, 
a command seems to involve three ideas : 1st. That an 
act be designated ; 2d. That it be somehow signified to 
be tlic will of God that this act be performed ; 3d. That 
it be signified that we are included within the number to 
whom the command is addressed. Otherwise, all the 
commandments to the patriarchs and prophets would be 
binding upon every one who might read them. And, 
hence, in general, whosoever urges upon us any duty, as 
the command of God, revealed in the Bible, must show 
that God has commanded that action to be done, and 
til at he has commanded us to do it. The mere fact that 
any thing has been done and recorded in Scripture, by 
no means places us under obligation to do it. It ex- 
cludes from being obligatory upon «//, what has been 
commanded, but which can be shown to have been in- 
tended only for individuals, or for nations, and not for 
the whole human race. Many of the commands of God 
in the Old Testament were addressed to nations. Such 
were the directions to the Israelites to take possession 
of Canaan ; to make war upon the surrounding nations. 
Of such precepts, it is to be observed : 1st. They are to 
be obeyed only at the time and in the manner in which 
they are commanded, and are of force only to those to 
whom they were given. The New Testament contains 



90 DR. WAYLANd's ethics applied to LINCOLN. 



all the moral precepts given to man ; that is to say, no 
precept of the Old Testament, which is not either re- 
peated, or its obligations acknowledged, under the new 
dispensation, is binding upon us at the present day." 

Therefore, there is no set of men in America author- 
ized to tell Abraham Lincoln that God required that he 
should proclaim freedom throughout the land. No man 
has authority from the Bible to tell him that he sits in 
the place of Pharaoh, and that God commands him to 
" Let my people go." These commands have all been 
made and fulfilled thousands of years before he was born. 
No man has authority from the Bible tO command the 
people of the North, or teach them that it is their duty 
to drive out the people of the South, or exterminate 
them, as Joshua expelled the Canaanites and took pos- 
session of their land. Joshua ftdfilled God's command at 
the time it was given ; and any other nation or people 
might, with equal authority, claim the right to expel the 
Northern people from their soil as they to dispossess 
the South. Thus, all the teachings of infidels, or of 
Christians, in this war, contrary to the Bible, are not 
binding upon the people. Instead of its being Abraham 
Lincoln's duty to go over to the Old Testament and find 
out what God said to Pharaoh, or Joshua, or Abraham, 
or Gideon, Dr. Wayland says " he is bound by moral 
obligation to obey the Constitution of his country. A 
government derives its authority from society, of which 
it is the agent ; that society derives its authority from 
the compact formed by individuals ; that society, and the 
relations between society and individuals, are the ordi- 
nance of God. Of course, the officer of a government, 
as the organ of society, is bound as such by the law of 
God, aild is under obligation to perform the diities of his 



EVERY OFFICER MUST OBEY THE CONSTITUTION. 91 



office in obedience to this law ; and, hence, it makes no 
difference how the other party to the contract executes 
their engagements, he, as the servant of God, set apart 
for this very thing, is bound, nevertheless, to act pre- 
cisely according to the principles by which God has de- 
clared that this relation should be governed. It is the 
duty of a legislator to understand the precise nature of 
the compact which binds together the particular society 
for which he legislates. He who enters upon the duty 
of a legislator without a knowledge of the limit of the 
several branches of the government, is not only wicked, 
but contemptible. He is the worst of all empirics: he 
offers to prescribe for a malady, and knows not whether 
the medicine he uses be a remedy or a poison. The in- 
jury which he inflicts is not on an individual, but on an 
entire community. Having acquainted himself with his 
powers, and his obligations, he is bound to exert his 
power precisely within the limits by which it is restricted, 
and for the purpose for which it was conferred, to the 
best of his knowledge and ability, and for the i)est good 
of the whole society. He is bound impartially to carry 
into effect the principles of the general and the particular 
compact just in those respects in wliicli the carrying them 
into effect is committed to him. For the action of others 
he is not responsible, unless he has been made so re- 
sponsible. He is not the organ of a section, or of a dis- 
trict, much less of a party, but of the society at large ; 
and he who uses his power for the benefit of a section, 
or of a party, is false to his duty, to his country, and his 
God. He is engraving his name on the adamantine 
pillars of his country's history, to be gazed on forever 
as an object of universal detestation. 

" It is his duty to leave every thing else undone. From 



92 ABRAHAM LINCOLN A USURPER. 



no plea of necessity, or of peculiar circumstances, may he 
overstep the limits of his constitutional power, either in 
the act itself, ^^ ^^^^ purpose for which the act is done. 
The moment he does this, he is a tyrant. Precisely the 
power committed to him exists, and no other. If he may 
exercise one power not delegated, he may exercise 
another, and he may exercise all ; thus, on principle, he 
assumes himself to be the fountain of power ; restraint 
upon encroachment ceases, and all liberty is henceforth 
at an end." 

What an amount of moral guilt, then, rests upon the 
people who have persuaded Abraham Lincoln to exer- 
cise powers not delegated to him by the framers of the 
Constitution! the original compact upon which the 
Union and the government was founded, he is the 
servant of God set apart to execute. 

Did AVashington, who was one of the framers of that 
Constitution, delegate authority to Mr. Lincoln to rob 
the American people of all their slaves, which he called 
their property, and demanded the restoration, by the 
British Government, of all such property taken from the 
citizens of the United States '? Can any thing be plainer 
than this, that the abolitionists, who declared all the 
laws sanctioning slavery " null and void," have persuaded 
the President that he can annul the laws at his pleasure, 
that he is the fountain of all power, and that he derives 
this power from the present generation, and is not 
bound to obey the laws made by Washington long years 
ago ] Washington was a father to his people, and the 
Union would long ere this have been restored, had Mr. 
Lincoln obeyed his counsels and the Constitution which 
he made. 

It has often been said that General Washington was 



WASHIXGTOX WAS A MAN OF PRATER. 93 



a man of prayer. It is unquestionably true. He recog- 
nized Jehovah as the God of nations — as the God of 
battles, and his prayers ascended to heaven for the 
triumph of the cause of American liberty. There were 
o^loomy periods in the Revolutionary struggle, when the 
hope of the good man was in God alone. How fervently 
Washington then prayed! AVhat tears of indignant 
sorrow he wept over British aggression, and how 
earnestly he invoked divine interposition in behalf of 
the oppressed colonies ! A soldier in the army, going 
forth from the camp into a retired spot, saw Washington 
on his knees in prayer. The sight sent conviction to 
his heart. He ultimately obtained hope in Christ, and 
became a devoted Christian. The scene he had wit- 
nessed, Washington in prayer, was ever vivid to the eye 
of his mind. Painters and sculptors have represented 
Washington in many positions ; would it not be well 
for some of them to picture him on his knees in prayer? 
It is assiimed by the party now holding the reins of 
tlie government which Washington helped to found — 
the party who declare that they are fighting to preserve 
the Constitution which Washington helped to frame — 
that if he were now alive he would be on their side in 
this bloody contest ; that his prayers would ascend to 
lieaven that their policy might succeed, and that he 
would join with them in declaring that slavery sliould 
now be swept away, if every slaveholder, and every man, 
woman and child should be swept away with it ; that 
this bloody war should never end until the shackles fall 
from every slave, and universal freedom prevails over 
America. In 1786, Washington said, " There is not a 
man Hving who wishes more sincerely than I do to see 
a plan adopted for the abolition of slave-r}'; but there is 



94 WASHINGTON SAYS THERE IS BUT 



but one proper and eiFectual mode by which it can be 
accomplished, and that is by legislative authority ; and 
this, as for as my suffrage will go, shall never be 



wanting. 



Now here was a warrior who had liberated by his 
sword and by his prayers for aid from the God of heaven, 
three millions of his own race from their yoke of 
bondage to the British king ; why did he not take this 
sword and free the black race in America at the same 
time ? Why did he not say to Rhode Island, Connec- 
ticut, New York, New Jersey, and all the States south 
of the Potomac, " I demand immediate and unconditional 
emancipation of all your negroes now held in slavery, 
or I shall call my soldiers about me and fight for their 
liberty 1" Was it because he delighted to see them in 
bondage ] He says, " I hope it will not be conceived 
by these observations that it is my wish to hold these 
unhappy people in slavery, but there is but one proper 
and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished." 
No abolitionist at the North had more pity for that 
unhappy people than the Father of his Country. They 
were always called by the fathers of the republic, " that 
unfortunate race ;" but Washington lived fourteen years 
after these sentiments were expressed, and yet died 
without bestowing liberty upon that people whose 
sorrows touched his heart. He lived a quarter of a 
century from the day in which he drew his sword in 
defence of the white race in America, oppressed by a 
tyrannical power exercised over them by the nation from 
whence they sprang. He sat eight years in the same 
chair of state now occupied by the President engaged in 
freeing the slaves left by him in bondage. He had the 
same constitutional authority over slavery as that of the 



ONE WAY TO ABOLISH SLAVERY. 95 



President thus engaged. lie felt as much compassion 
for the negro race thus doomed to the servitude of the 
white race as Abraham Lincohi now feels, who says, 
" It seems to me that if any thing is wrong, slavery is 
wrong." Yet Washington tells Abraham Lincoln, as 
well as the lawyer to whom he was writing, " There is 
but one proper and effectual mode by which the abolition 
of slavery can be accomplished, and that is by legislative 
authority," by the authority of the legislatures of the 
several States where slavery is established. They made 
the laws and they must unmake them with regard to 
slavery. Now, how came Washington to prescribe this 
OS the only remedy for the evils of slavery? This 
remedy was given, and this answer written, to counteract 
the principles and progress of the very party now holding 
ascendancy over this nation. A society had been formed 
in Washington's day, as he said, for the very purpose of 
robbing the Southern people of their slaves, and he de- 
clared that that society was acting repugnantly to justice, 
and that it was only by acts of tyranny and oppression 
thcv could accomplish the freedom of the slaves. The 
abolitionists tell us that " at this time the anti-slavery 
spirit was very animated, that all classes were imbued 
witli it down even to Tom Paine ; yet from that period 
it became less energetic. Its decline is traced through 
many years of obscuration, and its revival is at- 
tributed to the establishment of the Boston Liberator, 
in 1831." Why did this anti-slavery spirit become less 
energetic, and why could its decline be traced through 
many years of obscuration 1 Because in their petitions 
to Congress to free the slaves, these people were told 
that Congress had no authority given it by the Consti- 
tution to interfere with slavery, that each State had 



96 ABRAHAM LINCOLN DECLARES SLAVES PROPERTY. 



sole power over nil its own internal concerns. Well, 
Washington says, " Congress put these abolitionists to 
sleep, and they would scarcely wake before 1808." He 
also, it seems, administered an opiate himself which put 
a stop to their acts of injustice for a time, and they 
sank into a state of obscuration until 1831. Then the 
thunders of William IJoyd Garrison revived them from 
their long slumber. They met together in 1833, and 
there went forth the cry that the Constitution which 
would not allow Congress to interfere with slavery was 
" a covenant with Death and an agreement with hell !" 
As Wasliington was out of their way, they gave public 
notice to the Southern people that they must immediately 
relinquish all their property in slaves, without any 
remuneration, or suffer the consequences of a refusal. 
Washington interfered when they demanded the freedom 
of one slave without compensation: what would he have 
said to their demand for the freedom of all on the same 
condition] In December, 1862, Abraham Lincoln said: 
" The liberation of the slaves is the destruction of 
property, property acquired by descent or by purchase, 
the same as any other property. It is no less true for 
having often been said that the people of the South are 
no more responsible for the original introduction of 
their property, than are the people of the North ; and 
when it is remembered how unhesitatingly we use, all 
of us, cotton and sugar, and share the profits of deal- 
ing in them, it may not be quite safe to say that the 
South has been more responsible than the North for its 
continuance. If, then, for a common object, this prop- 
erty is to be sacrificed, is it not just that it be done at 
a common charge *? And if with less money, or money 
more easily paid, we can preserve the benefits of the 



WASHINGTON OPPOSED TO AN ABOLITION WAR. 97 



Union by this means better than by war alone, is it not 
economical to do it ] Is it doubted, then, that the plan 
I propose would shorten the war, and thus lessen its 
expenditure of money and blood 1 Other means may 
succeed in saving the Union — this could not fail. The 
way is plain, peaceful, generous, just: a way which, if 
followed, God must forever bless." The President be- 
lieved that God would bless the nation in paying for 
the slaves. But the abolitionists would not accept of 
such a plan. Four weeks after, Abraham Lincoln was 
comp(>llcd to proclaim freedom to every slave, without 
compensation or expatriation. These abolitionists as- 
sured him that the slaves would all flee from their 
masters, and the war thus be at an end. They now 
declare that it shall never end until the proclamation is 
fulfilled. Wovdd General AVashington join the abo- 
Htionists in such a war'? Would he take sides with 
men whom he himself rebelled against, as tyrants and 
oppressors — who have taught the right of his own slaves 
to run away — to rob and murder him if need be to gain 
their liberty ; and if his wife had stood in the way of 
their freedom, these negroes, mentioned in his letters, 
had a natural right to take her hfe, and that of any 
member of his fomily who miglit stand in their way] 
If the negroes have a right to murder any master, they 
had a right to take the life of Washington, or Jefferson, 
or any other patriot who helped this nation to its 
independence. If they have a right now to fight for 
their freedom, they had a right to fight against their 
masters in Massachusetts, and all the other Eastern 
States ; and as long as one negro remained in slavery, 
he had a right to kill his master to obtain his freedom. 
The black race had been in slavery in the colonies more 
7 



98 HOSTILITY BETW^EEN THE RACES. 



than a hundred years before independence was declared. 
They had as much right during all that time to rise 
against the white race as they have at this moment ; 
and if slavery is such a sin in the sight of God, that he 
has commissioned the North to extirpate it from the 
land, he might, with equal justice, have authorized 
some foreign nation to make war on America a hundred 
years ago, in order to liberate her slaves. That the 
number is greater now, takes nothing from the argu- 
ment, for at the tim'e of the Revolution there were 
more than half a million of slaves, belonging to our 
forefathers. These had a perfect right, according to the 
abolitionists, to murder off the white people on this 
continent ; and if their doctrine is true, the present 
generation ought never to have been born. The negroes 
should have possessed this country long ago, as they 
now possess Hayti ; and the white people either all 
exterminated or turned into mulattoes. No ! Wash- 
ington was in favor of the liberty of his own race, and 
willing to shed his blood to gain their freedom, but 
never proposed the same to free the negroes, and never 
advocated the slaughter of the white race for that pur- 
pose. It was left for the Republican party to inaugurate 
such a war ; and those who loved and revered Wash- 
in":ton turned with horror and disgust at the scenes 
they are enacting, under the inspiration of Garrison 
and his followers, whose counsels they follow, and re- 
ject the example and warnings of the Father of his 
C'ountry ! 

Four years from' the time the children of Washington 
received their last farewell admonitions from his lips, the 
Senate of the United States addressed the President who 
succeeded him in the following touching words • 



DEATH OF THE FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY. 99 



" Permit us, sir, to mingle our tears with yours. On 
this occasion it is manly to weep. Our country mourns 
a father. The Almighty Disposer of events has taken 
from us our greatest benefactor and ornament. With 
pride we review the life of Washington, and compare 
him with those of other countries who have been pre- 
eminent in fame. Ancient and modern names are dimin- 
ished before him. Greatness and guilt have too often 
been allied ; but his fame is whiter than it is brilliant. 
The destroyer of nations stood abashed at the majesty 
of his virtues. Magnanimous in death, the darkness of 
the grave could not obscure his whiteness. Such was 
the man we deplore. Thanks to God, his glory is con- 
summated. Washington yet lives on earth in his spot- 
less example — his spirit is in heaven. Let his country- 
men consecrate the memory of the heroic general, the 
patriotic statesman, and the virtuous sage ; let them 
teach their children never to forget that the fruits of 
his labors and his example are their inheritance." 

President Adams replied : " His example is now com- 
plete ; and it will teach wisdom and virtue to magis- 
trates, citizens, and men, not only in the present age, 
but in future generations as long as our history shall be 
read. If Trajan found a Pliny, a Marcus Aurelius can 
never want biographers, eulogists, or historians." From 
his home at Mount Vernon, from the capital which bore 
his name, a wail of sorrow was heard, which was wafted 
on the breeze all over the sunny South ; and soon was 
borne back to the North, from the shores of South 
CaroUna, the same notes of grief for the loss of a 
father. In Charleston city, where now is struck down 
even the youthful maiden, standing before the altar in 
her bridal robes, by the messenger of death — shot from 



100 A NATION MOURNED HIS LOSS. 



cannon, whose boomings still echo, and renew, and pro- 
long the wail that told of the death of Washington — a 
sermon was preached by the eloquent Richard Fur man, 
A.M., the first words of which announced that " the 
great soul of our beloved Washington has left the world ! 
Accounts, not to be disputed, have announced his death. 
It is an event long to be remembered by Americans. 
The melancholy tidings have vibrated on our ears in 
saddest accents ! They have penetrated our hearts, ex- 
citing sensations not to be described ; and have produced, 
in copious effusion, sincere, but unavailing tears. On 
this day, the anniversary of that which gave him to 
mankind — the day which, in honor of his virtues, you 
were used to devote to festivity and joy — we are met in 
the house of God to deplore our loss of him, and to 
weep over his urn. On the 14th of December (1799), 
and in the sixty-sixth year of his age, he complacently 
surrendered his soul into the hands of his Creator. 
Washington was to America the valuable gift of Gqd. 
Heaven has made him to us both a Moses and a Joshua. 
But Washington, the virtuous, the magnanimous, the 
brave, the father of his country, is numbered with the 
dead! 

" Cease to weep, thou virtuous, honored matron, who 
hast lost in him the man who ranked with the best of 
husbands ! Be consoled, ye adopted children, who shared 
in him the tenderest father's care ! Citizens of America 
— his political children — dry your tears ! Turn away your 
eyes from the desolate mansion, where his presence is no 
longer seen. View him in the realms of light, united 
in blest society of saints. See him holding high con- 
verse with the angels of light, and with them approach- 
ing the Divine Presence in humble adoration, perfecting 



THE RAID OF "OLD JOHN BHOWxX." 101 



in high, immortal strains, those grateful acknowledg- 
ments of the Divine interposition, goodness, and mercy, 
which he began here on earth, while youth smiles in his 
face, joy beams in his eye, and his brows are bound, not 
with a wreath of fading laurel, but with the branches of 
the tree of life and flowers of paradise !" 

And why is that same city, where the people then 
met to weep over the urn of Washington, again block- 
aded as in the dark days when he was fighting to free 
its captive citizens from the power of their British foes'? 
Why are the people of the whole South now in rebellion 
against Abraham Lincoln and the abolition party, as 
they were then in rebellion against George the Third 
and his tyrannical ministers'? Why are the beautiful 
plains of the South overspread with blood and carnage ; 
and why has the home of Mary, the mother of Wash- 
ington, been thrice drenched in human gore 1 Why are 
the white brothers of the great flimily of the Father of 
his Country still engaged in a war of direst hate, and 
seeking to plunge the dagger into each other's heart, 
instead of loving one another, and living together in 
peace, in the Union which he perilled his life to estab- 
lish for their inheritance forever 1 Because, that, in 
just sixty years from the moon in which his spirit en- 
tered the portals of bliss, the abolition brothers tore the 
laurels from his brow and placed them on the head of 
" Old John Brown !" Because they robbed him of his titles 
to the name and offices of a INIoses and a Joshua, and gave 
them to the chieftain of a robber band ! Because they 
disowned and repudiated their own father, and set up in 
his place a false prophet, who proclaimed that he had a 
mission from God Almighty to put their white brothers 
South to death, and give their lands to their negro slaves, 



102 JOHN BROWN CONSIDERED A MARTYR. 



and that between the command of the Lord of Hosts 
and implicit obedience to it, he permitted no constitution 
nor law to intervene. The Union and the Constitution 
which Washington founded were the two lions in his 
way ; but he marched straight ahead, trampling under 
foot the rotten stubble of unjust laws and constitutions 
that stood between him and his foes. This was the 
prophet the abolitionists had been long looking for, and 
praying for his appearing. When he came, they said 
that, " during the eighteen centuries which have passed, 
no such character has appeared among men ; that the 
galleries of the resounding ages echo with no footfall 
mightier than that of the martyr who stepped from the 
scaffold into the embrace of angels." They teach the 
children of the nation to sing his praises, instead of 
obeying the injunction of the Senate, to teach them 
never to forget that their own liberties were the fruits 
of the labor and toil of the Father of his Country. They 
have learned the soldiers, who are fighting for the Union, 
to hymn their peans to John Brown, while the Moses 
who led their fathers through the Revolution and 
planted them in the land of freedom is unhonored and 
unsuno-. They point the nation up to heaven, not 
there to behold the Father of his Country enwreathed 
with flowers of Paradise, but to view the criminal 
executed for breaking laws of his own enacting, among 
the spirits of the blest, mustering a cohort of these in- 
visible beings into his abolition army, and leading them 
against the people of the South, whom he failed to 
exterminate while here in the flesh. 

But why do the abolitionists reverence the name of 
John Brown above that of Washington '? What glorious 
deeds place his name so much higher on the roll of fame 



JOHN BROWN A MIDNIGHT KOBBER. 103 



than that of the warrior who gave freedom to America'? 
If history has recorded his noble achievements, let them 
be compared with those of the Father of his Country, 
whose laurels they have trampled in the dust. Here 
is a record of October, 1859, by Horace Greeley, now 
fighting under his banners : 

" Old Brown, of Ossawatamie, who was last heard of 
on his w^ay to Canada with a band of runaway slaves 
from Missouri, now turns up in Virginia, where he has 
been some months plotting and preparing for a general 
stampede of slaves. The insurrection at Harper's Ferry 
proves a verity." 

This was the Moses of the abolitionists. " No such 
character had appeared for eighteen hundred years 
among mankind." The fame of Rob Roy sinks in in- 
significance by the side of the daring exploits of the 
band of midnight robbers of old John Brown. His 
armed banditti captured the sword and the pistols of 
General Washington himself, presented to him by 
Frederick the Great and the Marquis de Lafayette, and 
more than this, they captured the heir to his name and 
to his earthly estates. No wonder he can gather a 
cohort of infernal spirits to assist in this war of subjuga- 
tion and extermination! Let the captive prisoner in 
whose veins flowed the blood of Washington, relate to 
us this brilliant victory, which throw^s all the battles of 
the Father of his Country against the King of Great 
Britain into the shades. 

" I was awakened in the night by hearing my name 
called. I opened the door, and before me stood four 
men, three of them armed with Sharpe's rifles, levelled 
and cocked, and the other with a revolver in his right 
hand, and a Hghtcd flambeau in the other. They said 



104 brown's attempt to re-enact 



to me, ' Is your name Washington V I answered, ' That is 
my name.' I was then told that I was a prisoner, and 
not to be frightened. I repUed, ' Do you see any thing 
that looks like fright about me V They said, ' If you 
surrender, and come with us freely, you are safe.' I 
was told to put on my clothes, and I said, ' While I am 
dressing, you will please tell me what all this means.' 
One said, ' We want your arms,' and I opened the gun- 
closet for them to help themselves. They then explained 
their mission, to wit : The emancipation of all the slaves 
in the country. Stephens said : ' Have you got any 
money V 1 replied : ' I wish I had a great deal' ' Be 
careful, sir,' said he. ' Have you a watcli V My reply 
was, ' I have, but you cannot have it. You have set 
yourselves up as great moralists and liberators of slaves. 
Now it appears that you are robbers as well.' " 

General Washington pronounced the abolitionists in 
his day tyrants and oppressors. His grand-nephew, 
Colonel John A. Washington, pronounced them robbers 
as well, and had he known their history at that moment 
he might have added, " and murderers likewise." 

" I told them I was dressed and ready to go. They 
bade me wait a short time and my carriage would be at 
the door. They had ordered my carriage for me, and 
pried open the stable door to get it out. My servant 
drove my horses. I suspected they were only robbers, 
and would turn off at some point, but they drove directly 
to the United States Armory at Harper's Ferry. They 
said they intended freely to appropriate the property 
of slaveholders to carry out their plans of freeing the 
negroes. 

" They seized all of Colonel Washington's slaves within 
their reach, and those on the other plantations near, 



THE HORRORS OF ST. DOMINGO. 105 



and made their owners prisoners also. They expected 
to be speedily reinforced, first, by the slaves in Canada, 
and, secondly, by the slaves in the South. They were 
to be armed with pikes, scythes, shot-guns, and other 
simple instruments of defence. The officers, white and 
black, and such of the negroes as were skilled, to have 
the use of Sharpe's rifles and revolvers. They antici- 
pated procuring provisions enough for subsistence by 
forage, as also arms and horses and ammunition, and thus 
sweep every plantation in the South."* Turn now to 
the horrors of St. Domingo, and view a faint picture of 
the scenes which this Moses of the abolitionists was pre- 
paring to re-enact among the white people of the South. 
And for this glorious undertaking they declare that " he 
stepped from the gallows into the embrace of angels." 
After the danger was over, the South asks, " Did he not 
train his sons to aid him in his attempt to waste with 
fire and sword the fairest land under the cope of heaven ] 
How many sisters did he propose to murder 1 How 
many social hearths to quench in blood] For what 
use were these hundreds of deadly rifles, those loads of 
pikes, those bundles of incendiary faggots '? A felon's 
death ! Almighty Providence ! Is man indeed so weak 
that lie can inflict no more 1" 

And what punishment is due to the abolitionists of 
the North who would see their white brothers and 
sisters of the South exterminated, and their lands given 
over to their negroes'? Yet for these awful attempts 
and designs of John Brown, they offer up their hymns 
of adoration and praise, and let it be remembered that 
the Southern people were not then rebels, and that name 



* Redpath's Life of John Brown and bis Trial. 



106 THE ABOLITIONISTS HAVE ATTEMPTED TO PRODUCE 



could not be used in justification of the murderous 
designs of the abohtionists ; but they were slaveholders, 
and these abolitionists declared that God commanded 
that slaveholders should be put to death. Redpath 
says, " If the Bible is God's true vs^ord, it follows that it 
is right to slay God's enemies." The Southern people 
were held up to the world as the enemies of God, and 
that it was a Christian duty to exterminate them, before 
one single man among them rebelled against the govern- 
ment. It is against these " tyrants," these " oppressors," 
these " robbers and murderers" that they are to-day in 
arms. Every method has been tried by these fiends in 
human shape to produce a massacre in the South pre- 
cisely like that in St. Domingo, and they are to-day 
lamenting over the failure of a plan said to be defeated 
by Generals Rosecrans and Garfield. They say, "It 
was a gigantic project; the trains were all laid, the 
matches all lighted, and two centuries of cruel wrong 
were about to be avenged in a night, when a white man 
said to the negro, ' You will slaughter friends and 
enemies. You will wade deep in innocent blood. God 
cannot be with you in midnight massacre.' A white 
man said that, and the uplifted torch fell from the 
negro's hand, and while the Southern men were starving 
our prisoners, butchering our wounded and desecrating 
our dead, we were supplicating the destroying angel to 
pass over their homes, and save their wives and little 
ones from swift destruction. In the day when ' He 
maketh inquisition for blood,' on whose garments, my 
Southern brothers, think you will he find the stain V 

That question, " my abolition brothers,''^ is already 
answered. You would have rejoiced to see those " wives 
and little ones involved in swift destruction," not because 



A SERIES OF MASSACRES IN THE SOUTH. 107 



they have rebelled against the government; for you 
declared the United States Government so wicked that 
none should obey it ; but because you have hated your 
white brothers, and Joved the negroes ; and following 
the example of your brother infidels in France — Marat 
and Cloots — you formed the mad and wicked project of 
spreading your doctrines of equality among the white 
and black races, between whom, says Washington, 
through his beloved friend, there exist distinctions and 
prejudices to be subdued only by the grave. And you 
can coolly and deliberately pursue your baneful theories 
through oceans of blood ; you could see a preconcerted 
insurrection of the blacks throughout the whole South ; 
you could see the white inhabitants, while sleeping 
peacefully in their beds, involved in one indiscriminate 
slaughter, from which neither age nor sex could afford 
an exemption. And General Washington, were he now 
alive, would furnish arms and ammunition to quell the 
insurrection, which you would rejoice to see successful; 
and punish the men who taught these wicked doctrines 
— and the Almighty knows on whose garments is the 
blood of this nation. John Brown was struck dead on 
the very threshold of his enterprise. The Almighty 
has proven by this that the Moses of the abolitionists 
was a lying propliet — tliat the commission he pretended 
to have received from the Lord was a forgery ; and yet 
the abolitionists delivered these spurious commands, 
this forged commission of the false prophet, into the 
hands of Abraham Lincoln, and declared to him that 
the Almighty placed him in power, and gave him the 
sword of Jolin Brown, for the express purpose of setting 
free the whole four millions of negro slaves. For three 
years " the soul of John Brown has been marching on," 



108 WASHINGTON AND JOHN BROWN COMPARED. 



until the " fairest land under the cope of heaven has 
been wasted with fire and sword, and thousands of social 
hearths, both North and South, have been quenched in 
blood ;" and still the war goes on. . 

Let the people invoke the spirit of Washington to 
come to their aid and subdue the spirit of Old John 
Brown! Washington still lives in heaven, his brows 
still bound with branches of the tree of life " which is 
given for the healing of the nations." He is an angel 
of light : John Brown an angel of darkness ; Washing- 
ton is an angel of mercy and peace : John Brown is an 
angel of vengeance and destruction; AVashington was 
the incarnation of goodness : John Brown the incarna- 
tion of evil; Washington was the good angel that 
presided over the Union and the Constitution: John 
Brown was the demon that rose out of the bottomless 
pit, bearing in his hands the banner inscribed with the 
motto, written in blood, " The Constitution of the 
United States is a Covenant with Death and an Agree- 
ment with Hell." Washington said, " I never expect to 
draw my sword again. I can scarcely conceive the 
cause that would induce me to do it. My first wish is 
to see the whole world in peace, and its inhabitants as 
one band of brothers. As mankind become more en- 
lightened and humanized, I cannot but flatter myself 
with the pleasing prospect that more pacific systems 
will take place among men." 

But the disciples of John Brown will have no peace ; 
they will not have the white people of the South for 
their brothers ; they are not yet enlightened, nor yet 
humanized, and they say, " We will have no pacification, 
no conciliation, no negotiation, but only subjugation, 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN JOHN BROAVN'S REPRESENTATIVE. 109 



and this war shall never end until every slave is free, 
although a million garments more are rolled in blood." 

Abraham Lincoln is the representative of John BroAvn. 
Let the people take the sceptre from his hand and place 
it in the hands of a representative of Washington. 
Let them bring fresh laurels and crown the Father of 
his Country anew. The abolitionists have trodden his 
glories in the dust! They have delivered into the 
hands of John Brown the trophies of his greatness. 
They have veiled his statue in a drapery of mourning. 
They have driven his children into exile, and scoff at 
the principles which they derived from their father. 
Let the people of the North, who love him, rally to his 
standard. Let them recount his glorious deeds on the 
field of battle, and renew the stories of his sufferings 
and toils in achieving the liberty of his country. Let 
them bear aloft a banner that will reach even unto the 
skies, and holding it before the burning throne, may his 
image be so impressed upon the silken folds that its 
brightness may be reflected over the whole land lie once 
dehghtcd to call his own. Let his children in the 
South behold the face of their father, with his kind, 
benignant smile, beckoning them to return to the Union. 
And let them see that they have brothers and sisters in 
the North who love them better than their negro slaves, 
and would welcome their return ! Then will the rebel- 
lious children no longer rebel. They will lay down 
their arms, and come with tears of penitence and joy 
to the embrace of their brothers, who still acknowledge 
the same father, and renew their allegiance to the 
government of the great, the brave, the magnanimous, 
the immortal George Washington, the Father of the 
American Kepublic. 



110 GEORGE B. m'CLELI.AN THE TRUE 



" Oh, yes ! thy counsels shall be heard, oh Washing- 
ton ! Oh warrior ! Oh legislator ! Oh citizen without 
reproach ! The acclamations of every age will be offered 
to the hero who gave freedom and happiness to his 
country ! The people who so lately stigmatized "Wash- 
ington as a rebel, regard even the enfranchisement of 
America as one of those events consecrated by history, 
and by past ages. Such is the veneration excited by 
great characters. The mourning which Napoleon orders 
for Washington, declares to France that Washington's 
example is not lost. It is less for the illustrious 
general, than for the benefactor of a great people, that 
the crape of mourning now covers our banners, and the 
uniform of our warriors. Amid all the excesses of a 
civil war, humanity took refuge in his tent, and was 
never repulsed. In triumph, or defeat, he was tranquil 
as wisdom, as pure as virtue. The finer feelings of his 
heart never abandoned him, even in those moments 
when his own interests would seem to justify a recourse 
to the laws of vengeance." — Funeral Oration on Wash- 
ington, delivered in the Temple of Mars, Paris. Bj/ 
Lewis Fontaties. 

But among all the brave chieftains of the North, oh 
Washington, who is like unto thee ] Unto whom, oh 
Father of our nation, has been transmitted the virtues 
which made thine own name illustrious and immortal ■? 
In whose soul now shines the same moral beauties which 
painters and sculptors declared were reflected from thine 
own countenance, the civic and humane holding ascend- 
ency over thy military virtues, making thy features 
radiant with benevolence and moral loveliness 1 Unto 
whom has there descended the genius, the bravery, and 
the undaunted courage which triumphed at last over a 



POLITICAL SON OF GEORGE WASHINGTON. Ill 



Kingdom and a throne ] And oh ye children of America ! 
is there now among you a living representative of the 
character and principles of the Father of your Country, 
he who gathered you together in one fold, secure from 
the paw of the Lion^ and bade you live in love and 
peace in the Union he established for you forever \ 

Yes, his name is on the air ! The people have 
descried him ! The true political son of AVasLington ! 
His own similitude ! George B. McClellan ! The 
resemblance so plain, so distinct, that the followers of 
John Brown, recognizing it, tore the laurels, which he 
had won in fighting for the Union, immediately from 
his brow, as they had torn those of Washington three 
years before, deprived him of his command, exiled him 
from the soldiers of his army whom he loved, trampled 
his honors in the dust, enveloped his name in a cloud 
of falsehood and detraction, and consigned liim, as they 
fondly hoped, to the dark shades of oblivron. Two 
years pass away, and they start up with affected surprise 
and ask the question, " Who is General McClellan, 
that has been nominated for President of the United 
Stat(^s \ Oh, he is that military adventurer who came 
to Washington, and whom President Lincoln drew from 
obscurity, and placed in command of the army. It was 
another officer than he that planned and executed the 
brilliant achievements which at first were credited to 
him." Thus, the tyrants and oppressors who robbed 
the Southern people of their prop^^ty in Washington's 
own dav, who robbed his namesake at midnight of his 
watch, his silver, his carriage and horses, of the sword 
presented by Frederick the Great, and the pistols pre- 
sented by General Lafayette, have not scrupled to rob 
General McClellan of his titles to honor, and of his 



112 VOTE OF THANKS BY CONGRESS TO 



credentials establishing his claims to the ofRce of Presi- 
dent of the United States. The very fact of their en- 
deavors to conceal them prove that if they can be found 
his claims will be undisputed, and it then remains for 
the people to choose for their President a representative 
of Washington, or of old John Brown. 

The very name of Washington was hailed with joy 
and blessings ; benedictions and praises fell thick upon 
his head. And so with the name of McClellan. On 
the 15th day of July, 1861, these words were recorded 
in the city of Washington : 

" Your name. General McClellan, was on lips yester- 
day counted by miUions. God bless you ! Your battles 
are not to be estimated by any count of killed or 
prisoners. The whole people start up from doubt and 
despondency, and hail the breaking day for w^hich they 
have waited with slow and counted hours. Yesterday 
was a happy day in Washington, even to hilarity. 
(It was Sunday). We sent up aspirations of thanks- 
giving for the victories in Western Virginia." 

" Congress hastens to send forth from the Capitol a 
greeting of 'thanks to General George B. McClellan 
and the officers and soldiers under his command, for the 
series of brilliant and decisive victories which tliey, by 
their skill and bravery, achieved over the rebels and 
traitors in the army on the battle-fields of Western 
Virginia.' " 

General Washington's army was proud of their leader, 
and so was General McClellan's. The officers in Western 
Virginia said, "We feel very proud of our wise and 
bravg young major-general. There is a future before 
him, if his life is spared, wliich he will make illustrious." 

Virginia was proud to be called the birth-place of 



GENERAL M'CLELLAN FOR VICTORIES. 113 



Washington, and Philadelphia was proud to claim the 
city as the birth-place of General McClellan. The 
Press says : 

"The brilliant victories which have recently been 
achieved by General McClellan have justly rendered 
him one of the most popular officers in our army, and 
justified all the high expectations which had been 
entertained by those who knew his sterling qualities. 
Before his advancing forces and their resistless attacks, 
the insurgents fly in terror ; but even then, his combina- 
tions are of such a character that they do not escape, for 
he has already taken more than a thousand prisoners, 
and, with but a small loss among his o^vn forces, killed 
two hundred and fifty of the enemy, including General 
Garnett, one of their most distinguished officers. 

" These results are peculiarly gratifying to our citizens, 
not only on account of the important influence they will 
have in deciding the struggle in which the patriots of 
the nation are engaged, but because we are proud to 
claim General McClellan as a Philadelphian, and because 
it is well understood that they are due, not to accident, 
but in a great measure to his military genius. No young 
man in our country has taken greater pains to render 
himself a thorough soldier. He not only attained high 
distinction in diff"erent branches of service before the 
war commenced, but by close personal inspection of all 
the Russian, French, and English camps, during the 
Crimean war, thoroughly familiarized himself with all 
the important phases of modern warfare. 

" Devotedly attached to the Union, aU the energies of 

his nature have been enlisted in the present struggle to 

preserve it ; and he has displayed in all his movements 

since it commenced, a degree of zeal, energy, courage and 

8 



114 m'CLELLAN summoned to protect WASHINGTON. 



sagacity, deserving of great credit. The completeness 
of his preparations, doubtless, aided materially to insure 
his success ; and he evinced, in organizing his forces, the 
same skill, which, when he fairly encountered the enemy, 
produced such glorious triumphs. The officers of the 
rebel army have been heard to express serious appre- 
hensions of the fate that awaited them, after General 
McClellan's column fairly commenced operations in 
Western Virginia. If his Hfe is spared, his name wiU 
doubtless continue to strike terror into every traitor's 
breast, as long as an armed foe to our government treads 
our soil." 

And that is the man they now call a traitor, a sympa- 
thizer with the rebels, because he was determined to 
preserve the Constitution and Union, as the Father of 
his Country commanded him to do. 

As Washington was sent for in haste to come to the 
relief of Boston, so General McClellan was summoned 
in haste to protect Washington. 

On July 22d, 1861, Horace Greeley said: " We have 
fought and been beaten. (God forgive our rulers that it 
is so.) The sacred soil of Virginia is crimson and wet 
with the blood of thousands of Northern men, need- 
lessly shed. An indignant people will demand the im- 
mediate retirement of the present cabinet. Give the 
President capable advisers, and leaders for the army 
worthy the rank and file. The people will insist upon 
having the best generals, captains, and colonels the 
country can furnish." 

24th. " General McClellan has been summoned from 
Western Virginia to take command of the Army of the 
Potomac." 

" Philadelphia, July 25. — General Geo. B. McClellan, 



HIS RECEPTION IN PHILADELPHIA. 115 



Commandant of the Grand Army of the Potomac, left 
Beverly on Tuesday, and rode forty miles on horseback 
to Grafton, where he took the cars for Wheeling. On 
his arrival at Pittsburg, he was received with the great- 
est eclat by the people. The military, firemen, and citi- 
zens, turned out to meet him, and several salutes were 
fired in his honor. Upon arriving in this city, the cars 
which are pulled by horses from the Schuylkill into 
town were surrounded by a wild mob, cheering, yellino", 
and climbing the platforms. A carriage, guarded by 
policemen, was waiting at the depot. A regiment of 
Reserve Grays escorted the barouche, and General 
McClellan was obliged to stand over the whole route, 
and bow, hat-in-hand, to the thousands of faces and 
salutations. Bouquets were showered upon him from the 
ladies at the windows, and all the bunting on Chestnut 
and Spruce streets was displayed. His carriage was 
loaded down with flowers. General McClellan passed 
his boyhood in Philadelpliia, and the people were dis- 
posed to lay the whole merit of his career to that fact." 

Yes, General McClellan is brave, valiant, heroic, like 
unto Washington, and the same honors strew his path; 
but who shall unfold to public view the virtues of his 
heart '? All are proud to do him homage — all eager to 
speak forth his praises — is there one who can portray 
the beauties of his mind and heart ? Yes, to a listening: 
throng, gathered in the capital of the nation. General 
Ambrose Burnside pronounced this eulogy upon his 
friend. Said the speaker : 

"I have known General McClellan intimately; we 
were students together, soldiers together in the field, 
private citizens together for years. No feehng of am- 
bition beyond the good of his country, and the success 



116 THE CONFIDENCE FELT IN "WASHINGTON 



of her cause, ever entered his breast. We have lived 
together in the same family. I know him as well as I 
know any human being on the face of the earth. No 
more honest, conscientious man exists than General 
McClellan. (Applause.) All that he does is with a 
single view for the success of this government and the 
breaking down of this rebellion. Nothing under the 
sun would ever induce him to swerve from what he 
knows to be his duty. He is an honest, conscientious, 
Christian-like man. And I would add, he has the 
soundest head, and the clearest military perception of 
any man in the United States. (A cry — ' Western Vir- 
ginia.') A more brilliant short campaign was never 
enacted than that of Western Virginia. He need not 
be ashamed of his work there, and the country need 
never be ashamed of any work he might ever have to 
do." (Applause.) Yes, he has the virtues as well as the 
genius of Washington. 

August 1st, 1861, Horace Greeley wrote: "Ten days 
ago the confusion and apparent demoralization of the 
troops at Washington, after the disaster at Bull Run, 
caused a pall of gloom to settle over the capital city, 
and here, and elsewhere. The dull, leaden feeling which 
follows a bitter reverse oppressed all men, and very few 
thought of the future with springing hope. Now, in 
this day all is changed, and the chief cause of this 
changed atmosphere is the confidence felt in Washing- 
ton by the advent of the young general who is called to 
command the army, and the admirable system of dis- 
cipline he has put in force." 

Special Dispatch. — " It is said by those who profess 
to know, that the credit of calling General McClellan to 



ON THE ADVENT OP THE YOUNG GENERAL. 117 



the command of the Army of the Potomac belongs to 
President Lincoln." 

And this is the " military adventurer whom Mr. Lin- 
coln drew from his obscurity !" " Oh, shame ! where is 
thy blush r 

General Washington demanded of the British that 
the Kevolutionary War should be conducted upon the 
highest principles of civilization, and complained that 
" the appellation of rebels to the Americans was deemed 
sufficient to sanctify every species of cruelty to them." 
In reply to a letter from him on this subject, Sir Guy 
Carleton wrote as follows: 

" Sir : — It is with me to declare, that if war must 
prevail, I shall endeavor to render its miseries as light 
to the people of this continent as the circumstances of 
such a condition will possibly permit. How much so- 
ever we may dijQfer in other respects, upon this one point 
we must perfectly concur ; being alike interested to pre- 
serve the name of Englishman from reproach, and indi- 
viduals from experiencing such unnecessary evils as can 
have no eflFect upon a general decision." 

Washington demanded that every soldier who should 
be caught pillaging, plundering, or burning a dwelling, 
should be punished ; and said that death itself was not 
too great a punishment in such a case. But the aboli- 
tionists demanded the removal of General McClellan for 
not wishing to bring reproach upon the descendants of 
the family of Washington, and disgracing the name of 
American. If General McClellan was a rose-water 
general, so was Washington. The name of rebel has 
sanctified outrages for which the Almighty wiU hold the 
North, as well as the South, to strict account. 

General Washington had his enemies and persecutors, 



118 COMMENCEMENT OF PERSONAL ATTACKS 



and so has General McClellan. A writer says : " When 
a man is compelled to contend with enemies from with- 
out, and with enemies from within — with those even of 
his own. household as well as with the foe in the field — 
he certainly deserves the sympathies of every liberal and 
magnanimous mind." 

" This is the fate of the young and distinguished oificer, 
who, on the retirement of General Scott, was called 
upon to succeed him, with all the great and fearful 
responsibiUties of the chief command. But the fortune 
of General McClellan is not a singular one. The great 
Burke has truly said that 'censure is the tax a man 
pays to the public for beicg eminent.' Even the noble 
and unequalled Washington, in the darkest days of the 
Revolution, was assailed by malignant envy, and a con- 
spiracy formed to remove him. His great soul was 
troubled, not only for his country, but his countrymen ; 
and the descendants of those who abused and conspired 
against Washington are now abusing and conspiring 
against McClellan. We are not instituting any com- 
parisons between men, but draw on history for illustra- 
tions. We have judged General McClellan, not as a 
Democrat, or a RepubUcan. We have but recently 
learned that he is called a Democrat. We have judged 
him only as a general and a soldier. When he achieved 
those brilliant victories in Western Virginia, his name 
rung through the land. Why should he be condemned 
because he is at the head of the Army of the Potomac 1 
Nothing that he does, or does not do, satisfies his ene- 
mies. We have no prejudices for or against General 
McClellan, but we are disgusted, nay, indignant at the 
bitter, unrelenting personal attacks upon him, conflicting 
in their charges, and only agreeing in their rancor and 



ON THE YOUNG HERO BY POLITICIANS. 119 



hate. Attacks which tend to give aid and comfort to 
the enemy. We look upon these assaults of General 
McClellan, and, through him, on the government, as 
treason, moral, if not political and legal, against the 
country." — Binghamton Republican^ 1862. 

Washington prayed for his country, and so does 
General McClellan. "Dr. Thompson of the Second 
Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati, relates that he was re- 
cently seated in his study, when a gentleman requested 
aa interview, which was granted. He came to talk 
about his country, expressing his anxiety about its con- 
dition, and at length requested the Doctor to pray for 
the Republic and for him. The Doctor complied. And 
after further conversation on this theme, the gentleman 
requested the minister to pray with him. They knelt 
upon the floor, and the visitor, in a devout and eloquent 
petition, invoked the aid and protection of the Almighty 
in this great struggle in which the Eepublic is involved. 
' My visitor,' said Dr. Thompson, ' was Major-General 
George B. McClellan. It was the most touching and 
unaffected incident I ever witnessed.' " — Religious 
Herald, 1861. 

Letter from General McClellan to Bishop 
Whipple : 

Headquarters Army of the Potomac, ' 
September, 1862. 
My dear Bishop — Will you do me the favor to per- 
form Divine Service in my camp this evening % If you 
can give me a couple of hours notice, I shall be glad, 
that I may be able to inform the corps in the vicinity. 
After the great success that God has vouchsafed us, I 



120 CONFIDENCE OF THE SOLDIERS 



feel that we cannot do less than avail ourselves of the 
first opportunity to render to him the thanks that are 
due to him alone. I, for one, feel that the great result 
is the result of his great mercy ; and would be glad that 
you should be the medium to offer the thanks I feel 
due to him from this army, and from the country. 
Earnestly hoping you will accede to my request, 
I am, very respectfully, your humble servant, 

Geo. B. McClellan, Maj. Gen. Commanding. 

Frederick, Md., September 27, 1862. 

My dear General — I have spent the day in visiting 
your brave boys who are in the hospital here. I had 
the privilege to visit the wayside hospitals between here 
and the camps. I am sure it will gladden your heart — 
and it surely did my own — to see the great love they 
have to you. When I told them how tenderly you had 
spoken of them, and how you knelt with me in prayer 
for God's blessing upon them, many a brave fellow wept 
for joy ; and on every side I heard, " God bless the 
General ;" while here and there some veteran claimed 
the privilege to say, " God bless little Mac." I had 
the opportunity to commend some dying men to God, 
and to whisper the Saviour's name in their ear for their 
last journey. 

If I did not fear of wearying you, I could write an 
hour, telling you of words of loving confidence spoken 
by these brave sufferers, who have been with you in 
good and evil report. I will not. But I cannot close 
without telling you how sweet is the remembrance of 
the pleasant service held in your camp, nor to assure you 
that it is a pleasure every day to ask God to bless you. 
Your way is rough. Many do not know you. Many 



IN " UTILE MAC." 121 



are jealous of your success. Many will try to fetter you. 
But let no cloud above, or thorn beneath, trouble you. 
Above you is God our Father, Christ our Saviour, the 
Holy Ghost our Comforter. God will hear our prayers. 
It may be a weary, foot-sore way, but there is light 
beyond. God bless you. 

I am, with love, your servant, for Christ's sake, 

H. B. Whipple. 



JAMES CHALLEN & SON, PubHshers, PhUad'a. 



1308 CHESTNUT STBEET. 



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WASHINGTON, OUE EXAMPLE. 



This new work contains a history of facts and incidents in 
the life of the " Father of his Countrj^" which places the party, 
now holding the power in this nation, in direct hostility to all 
the principles and practices which he avowed and followed ; and 
convicts them of a settled plan — which they plotted more than 
thirty years ago — of overthrowing the government which he 
established. He pronounced his maledictions upon the Abol- 
itionists from the fouadation of the Union, declared their acts 
repugnant to justice, and said that it was only by deeds of tyranny 
and oppression that they could accomplish the freedom of the 
slave. The work proves, by historical records, that Washing- 
ton prohibited the enlistment of negroes into his army when 
fighting for American liberty; that he wrote and spoke of 
negro slaves as the property of the American people, and used 
his best endeavors to protect them in their rights to this prop- 
erty. It contains the opinions of many of the greatest states- 
men who aided in forming our government, and of those who 
have controlled the nation since its formation ; and affords 
abundant proof that the Abolitionists have brought this country 
into its present fearful trials by refusing to obey the laws, abide 
by the counsels, and adhere to the principles of the " Father of 
his Country." 

This history shows conclusively that the only people who, 
still reverence the character and cling to the political principles 
of AYashington have selected as their candidate for President 
his exact counterpart, in the person of General McClellan. No 
student of history can fail to discover, in that pure and upright 
patriot-warrior, an impersonation of the "Father of his Coun- 
try ;" and if the people of America ever desire a restoration of 
the Union — if they desire the return of peace and prosperity to 
our now unhappy land — they will place the man in power who 
will protect the people, both North and South, in the rights and 
the liberties won by the blood and treasure of the Fathers of 
the American Eepublic. 

JAMES CHALLEN & SON, PUBLISHERS, 
1308 Chestnut St, Philadelphia. 



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